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SERMONS 



PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL 



RUGBY SCHOOL, 



WITH AN 



ADDRESS BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 



BY 



THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D., 

HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL, AND AUTHOR OF " THE HISTORY 
OF ROME," "lectures ON MODERN HISTORY/' ETC., ETO. 



FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 



NEW- YORK: 

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY. 

PHILADELPHIA : 

GEORGE S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT-STREET. 

MDCCCXLVI. 



PREFATORY NOTICE. 



The publishers of the " Life and Corres- 
pondence OF Dr. Arnold/' and of Dr. ^' Ar- 
nold's Miscellaneous Works," now present to 
the admirers of that author the volume of Dis- 
courses which, as Head Master of Rugby School, 
were addressed to the pupils of that institution. It 
will be perceived that they are expressly appropri- 
ated to that " description of readers," although 
others will be edified by the impressive obligations 
of duty, both moral and religious, which are in- 
terspersed throughout the whole series. Many 
circumstances and relations exist in the public 
endowed schools in England, such as Eton, Har? 
row, Rugby, and Winchester, which are almost 
unknown in the United States ; yet on all the 
grand points of study, habits of life, and intellec- 
tual characteristics which concern students, they 
are identical — -especially in reference to the re- 
quirements of personal decorum, Christian mo- 



IV PREFATORY NOTICE. 

rality, and the pious observances enjoined by the 
Holy Scriptures. 

There having been a deep and wide-spread so- 
licitude frequently announced, that the results of 
Dr. Arnold's experience, as a tutor of the highest 
order, should be more extensively known — with 
the graver instructions enounced by the Master of 
the Rugby School, the description of which in 
^' Arnold^ s Miscellaneous Works ^^ has excited 
such great interest — the publishers have been in- 
duced to issue the volume of Sermons for the Rug- 
by School separate; expressly that the senior 
pupils in academies and schools, and collegiate 
students, may enjoy the edifying admonitions of 
probably the most successful and useful preceptor 
of the present century — whether we advert to the 
immediate benefits of his tuition, or to the exem- 
plary reforms in academic education, which have 
embalmed his memory with equal affection and 
renown. 

New-York, Nov, 19, 1845. 



CONTENTS, 



SERMON I. 

PAQB 

Hebrews xi. 1. — Now Faith is the substance of things not 

seen 9 

SERMON II. 

1 John V. 4, 5. — This is the victory which overcometh the 
world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the 
world, but he that believe th that Jesus is the Son of God ] 17 

SERMON III. 
John vi. 58. — This is the bread which came down from 
heaven ; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead : 
he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever . . 26 

SERMON IV. 
Acts ii. 42. — And they continued stedfastly in the apostles* 
doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers 35 

SERMON V. 

[preached on ash WEDNESDAY.] 

1 Cor. xiii. 11. — When I was a child, I spake as a child, I 
understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I 
became a man, I put away childish things . . .44 

SERMON VI. 
John iii. 12. — If I have told you earthly things, and ye be- 
lieve not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly 
things? 51 

SERMON VII. 

2 Kings ii. 24. — There came forth two she bears out of the 
wood, and tare forty and two children of them . . 57 



VI CONTENTS. 

SERMON VIII. 

PAGE 

Mait. xviii. 6. — Whoso shall offend one of these little ones 
which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
in the depth of the sea ....... 64 

SERMON IX. 

Rom. i. 16. — I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ . 71 

SERMON X. 

John xvi. 12, 13. — I have yet many things to say unto you, 
but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the 
Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth . 83 

SERMON XI. 

[preached on trinity SUNDAY.] 

1 Tim. iii. 16. — Great is the mystery of godliness : . 90 
SERMON XII. 

Gal. iii. 24. — The law was our schoolmaster, to bring us 
unto Christ 99 

SERMON XIII. 

Luke xiv. 24. — None of those men which were bidden shall 
taste of my supper 109 

SERMON XIV. 

LuJce xiv. 18. — They all with one consent began to make 
excuse 117 

SERMON XV. 

Matt. X. 36. — A man's foes shall be they of his own house- 
hold 126 

SERMON XVI. 
John xiii. 13, 14. — Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye 
say well ; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, 
have washed your feet ; ye ought also to wash one anoth- 
er's feet 137 



CONTENTS. VU 

SERMON XVII. 

PAOB 

Rev. xxii. 10-12. — And he saith unto me. Seal not the say- 
ings of the prophecy of this book : for the time is at hand. 
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he which is 
filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let 
him be righteous still : and he that is holy, let him be 
holy still. And behold I come quickly, and my reward is 
with me, to give every man according as his work shall 
be 145 

SERMON XVIII. 

John xiii. 10. — He that is washed, needeth not, save to wash 
his feet, but is clean every whit : and ye are clean, but 
not all 155 

SERMON XIX. 

Luke xvii. 36, 37. — Two men shall be in the field ; the one 
shall be taken, and the other left. And they answered 
and said unto him, Where, Lord 1 And he said unto 
them. Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be 
gathered together 164 

SERMON XX. 

1 Peter iv. 11. — If any man speak, let him speak as the 
oracles of God : if any man minister, let him do it as of 
the ability which God giveth : that God in all things may 
be glorified through Jesus Christ 174 

SERMON XXI. 

Mark vi. 31. — And he said unto them. Come ye yourselves 
apart into a desert place, and rest a while ; for there were 
many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much 
as to eat 182 

SERMON XXII. 

Mark vi. 31. — And he said unto them. Come ye yourselves 
apart into a desert place, and rest a while : for there were 
many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much 
as to eat : , 190 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

SERMON XXIH. 

PAGE 

Luke V. 29. — And Levi made him a great feast in his own 
house : and there was a great company of publicans and of 
others that sat down with them 198 

SERMON XXIV. 
1 Peter v. 6, 7. — Humble yourselves tlierefore under the 
mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time : 
casting all your care upon him ; for he careth for you . 209 

SERMON XXV. 

Mark vi. 31. — And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves 
apart into a desert place, and rest a while , , .219 

SERMON XXVI. 
Ephesians v. 17. — Be ye not unwise, but understanding 
what the will of the Lord is 228 

SERMON XXVII. 
John xi. 11. — Our friend Lazarus sleepeth: but I go, that I 
may awake him out of sleep . ; . . . .237 

SERMON XXVIII. 
Luke xvi. 8. — The children of this world are in their gen- 
eration wiser than the children of light .... 245 

SERMON XXIX. 
Genesis xxxiv. 30. — And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye 
have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabi- 
tants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Periz- 
zites ; and I being few in number, they shall gather them- 
selves together against me, and slay me ; and I shall be 
destroyed, I and my house 256 

SERMON XXX. 
Ephesians vi. 13. — Wherefore take unto you the whole ar- 
mour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the 
evil day, and having done all, to stand . . . .264 

Address before Confirmation 275 



SERMON I 



HEB. XI. 1. 

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen. 

Every one, who has ever heard so much as the very- 
name of Christianity, knows how much the word Faith 
has to do with it : he may not know what it means, 
still less may he know all that it means ; but 
still he knows that it has a great deal to do with 
religion, that a great deal of stress has been laid upon 
it, and a great deal said and written for and against 
it. He knows too that it is a word of which he does 
not hear much, except as connected with religion : 
that it is not like honesty, honour, courage, wisdom, 
kindness, cruelty, &c. ; that is, a thing which is con- 
tinually brought forward in common life, which all 
seem to understand, and all in word, at least, to value. 
He knows, in short, that it is something peculiar to 
religion, and in an especial manner peculiar to the 
religion of Christ. 

1 



10 SERMON I. 

So in truth it is : it is among the most perfect 
proofs of God's wisdom, to those who can understand, 
that in his revelation to man he has taken hold in a 
manner, if I may so speak, of that one part of our 
nature which was lying most neglected, and yet in 
which the seed of our highest perfection is alone to 
be found. Faith is indeed that which most raises us 
from a state of brute selfishness and brute ignorance, 
and leading us on gradually, according to our gradual 
growth, from one high object to another, ends by offering 
to the mind of the Christian the most perfect object of 
all, even God himself, our Father, and Saviour, and 
Sanctifier. And again, as faith is so powerful and so 
excellent when once awakened, and steadily kept 
alive, so it is that part of our nature in which the 
effects of our corruption are seen most strongly. In- 
finitely different as are the causes which check and 
destroy it at different ages, in different stations, and 
in different characters, still all of us at every part of 
our lives must feel that it is in a manner our weak 
point ; and all of us have the greatest need to join in 
the prayer of the original disciples of Christ, and to 
say to him as they did, " Lord, increase our faith." 

But now comes the question. What is faith ? And 
as an answer to it I have chosen the words of the text ; 
^' It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen." That is to say, it is that feeling 
or faculty within us, by which the future becomes to 
our minds greater than the present ; and what we do 
not see more powerful to influence us than what we 
do see. But, perhaps, some few common instances 
will explain what I mean more fully. 



SERMON !• 11 

I will take, first, one of the simplest and lowest. 
A child is told by his parents to be careful and tidy ; 
he is threatened with punishment if he is not so ; he 
is promised some little reward if he is. The parents 
are not present ; the punishment and the reward are 
not actually before the eyes of the child : while the 
temptation is : that is to say, he feels that it is a 
trouble to put his things together, and that at the very 
moment when he sees something which he wishes to 
be doing immediately. Now, then, if he thinks more 
of the future reward and punishment than of the 
present trouble and pleasure ; if he cares more for 
his parents, whom he may not see for an hour or two, 
than for the plaything which lies before his eyes ; if 
he accordingly puts his things together, and is care- 
ful and tidy, then this child has, after his humble 
measure, acted by faith ; he has gained some expe- 
rience of that principle which, if he is a follower of 
Jesus, must be the guide of his life till that hour when 
all earthly things shall pass away. 

I have purposely begun with an instance of the 
humblest kind ; let us now ascend a step higher. A 
boy is told by his parents that over eating and drink- 
ing will make him ill ; it may be not immediately, 
but that he will in all probability feel the effects of it 
before he has gone on long. Here the evil threatened 
is not only more distant, but it is not absolutely cer- 
tain. The trial of faith then is somewhat greater : 
for the temptation here, as in all cases, is present and 
before his eyes : the evil of yielding to it is future, 
and he can only see it with his mind. Here too, if 
the future prevails over the present, the unseen over 



12 SERMON I. 

that which is seen, the boy has acted by faith, and in 
proportion as the faith had to look to a more distant 
object, so it was stronger and more advanced than that 
of the child. 

We will proceed a little further still. A boy is 
told by his parents to exert himself in learning his 
lessons : he is told that habits of idleness will become 
stronger the longer he indulges them ; that much of 
his future prospects in life will depend on his own 
conduct now ; that the study which is now so irksome 
to him will in time, if steadily pursued, reward him 
by the pleasures of knowledge, which he will then 
find abundantly worth all the trouble it cost him to 
arrive at them. Here again the good thing promised 
is not only still more distant, but it is of a nature 
which the boy to whom it is offered cannot fully un- 
derstand. In the other case he knew what it was to 
be sick ; he fully understood that it was painful and 
disagreeable ; but of the pleasures of knowledge, or 
the inconveniences of ignorance, he can have but a 
very faint and vague idea. If then, although the 
good thing promised him be not only distant, but is 
one which he cannot fully understand ; if believing 
what his parents tell him, he overcomes the present 
temptation of idleness, in the hope of a distant and in- 
distinctly understood reward, here is an instance of 
faith yet stronger and of a fuller stature ; and every 
one sees that the character is in a high degree en- 
nobled and improved by acting under its influence. 

I have been speaking hitherto of Faith ; yet I have 
spoken of it as quite distinct from Religion or Chris- 
tianity. It is very true, that if we knew nothing of 



SERMON I. 13 

God, Still there would be the same feeling of prefer- 
ring the future and the unseen to the present, and to that 
which is seen ; and that this feeling, wherever it exist- 
ed, would raise and improve the mind. And it is 
true, also, I think, that God intends us to learn how 
we ought to feel towards him, by feeling first so to- 
wards our parents : they are a child's first appointed 
objects of faith, and hope, and love. But the moment 
that we are told of God, we see at once that He is an 
object of faith, far more excellent than any other, and 
that it is when directed towards him, that the feeling 
can be brought forwards to its full perfection. I sup- 
posed, that the commands given to the child in the three 
former instances, were given hy his parents ; that is to 
say, by persons whom he knew to be worthy of belief, 
because they loved him dearly, and wished his good, 
and understood how to take care of him far better than 
he did himself. It is a very necessary part of faith, 
that the thing which we believe be told us by some 
one whom we have reason for believing ; — some one 
whom we know to be, so far as we are concerned, good 
and wise. Now a child's parents are to him so good 
and so wise, that it becomes properly an act of faith 
in him to take their word : yet still we know, and 
children very soon learn to know, that parents are very 
far from being quite good and quite wise : they may 
therefore hold out hopes and fears which it may not 
be quite safe to build upon. But the moment we are 
told of God, — so perfect in wisdom, so perfect in good- 
ness, so perfect in power, — we find one on whose assu- 
rance we may rely with the most certain trust ; and 
whose commands will be as good and wise, as the ful- 



14 SERMON I. 

filment of his threats and promises will be sure. Our 
heavenly Father is, in this respect, all that our earthly 
parents are, or can be to us, and all in a degree 
infinitely more excellent. Again, I said it was a 
greater trial of faith when the good or the evil ex- 
pected was distant, and still greater, when it was 
not only distant, but imperfectly understood. Now 
the good and evil which God promises and threatens 
to Christians is so distant, that it will only come after 
our earthly lives are over : it is so imperfeqdy 
understood, that eye has not seen, or ear heard, 
neither has it entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive, the things which God has prepared for them 
that love him ; — nor yet, I may add, the wrath which 
he has prepared for those who do not love him. So, 
then, faith in God, in his promises and his threatenings, 
seems to be perfect in all the points required to per- 
fect it ; it rests on the word of him who is all good, 
all wise, and all powerful ; it points to objects so dis- 
tant that faith must be strong and well matured, in 
order to reach to them ; it encourages and terrifies, by 
blessings and miseries so far removed from our pres- 
ent conceptions, that the faith must be far more pow- 
erful which can overcome actual temptations by dwel- 
ling on objects, which our understandings are as un- 
able to grasp fully, as our bodily eyes and ears to 
see and to hear them. 

This, then, is religious faith ; — but there is yet a 
peculiar species of religious faith, which is more ex- 
cellent and more powerful than all the others, and 
which, therefore, is not unfrequently called in scrip- 
ture, in a particular manner, by the common name 



SERMON I. 15 

of Faith. I am now speaking of Christian Faith ; 
that is, not only a faith in God, our heavenly Father, 
but a faith in God, as He has revealed himself to us 
in the New Testament ; that is, in God the Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason why this 
Christian faith is so much more excellent than any 
other kind, even of religious faith, is because it shows 
us more of God's perfections than any other ; and 
from that view becomes even yet stronger, and more 
pure, and more self- abandoning. I know well enough, 
that here I am approaching ground on which, unhap- 
pily, I cannot, to all my hearers, make myself fully 
understood. Many there are, and ever will be, in 
every congregation, to whom the word of salvation, 
through the blood of Christ, will be as hard and as unin- 
teresting a saying, as it was to those Jews who followed 
Christ by the sea of Galilee, because they had eaten 
of the loaves and were filled, but who turned back 
and walked no more with him, when he spoke of the 
bread of life ; and yet more when he told them, that 
they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. I know 
that all cannot receive the words of the kingdom of 
heaven, because their hearts and minds are so little 
heavenly. Of faith in our parents' promises we can 
all understand, however little we practise it ; — even 
religious faith, in its more general sense, is not wholly 
out of our reach ; but when we come to Christian 
faith, so simple and so natural to those who have first 
believed their parents' word, and have early learnt 
from them to believe and love God's also, we find it 
hard and wholly unattractive to those who have never 
been in the habit of believing either. How can such 



16 SERMON I. 

understand the excellence of Christian faith, which 
shows to us God so pure, that he must punish the sin- 
ner, and yet so loving to us, that he gave his only- 
begotten Son to save us from our sins ? How can 
they, who are so vain of every little good thing they 
do, and who so quickly forget every thing that they 
do evil ; how can they understand a faith which has 
learnt so much of God and of itself, as to feel that all 
its good deeds are less than nothing, when compared 
with an eternal reward — that its evil deeds are so 
many and so hateful to God, that it finds not in itself 
how to escape from the sentence of his Justice ? In 
short, how can they, who live wholly by sight, who 
do not practice even the lower kinds of faith, how can 
they so much as understand the highest ? Yet, as 
without that highest faith we cannot be saved, — as you, 
all of you, and I, too, are living either in and by this 
faith, or in the assured and daily increasing wrath of 
God, — as we have peace with him through Jesus 
Christ, or haf e no peace at all, and shall have none 
for ever, and our state is only the more hopeless, for 
our being so fatally blind to it, — so I must strive to lay 
before you, in some future sermons, the nature and 
uses of Christian Faith ; hoping and praying that the 
attempt may be blessed by the Spirit of God to your 
benefit, and that it may not be to me a double condem- 
nation, if, while I speak of it to others, I have it not 
practically for my own soul's deliverance. 



SERMON II, 



1 JOHN V. 4, 5. 

This is the victory which overcometh the world, evert 
our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, hut 
he that helieveth that Jesus is the Son of God ? 

I SPOKE in my sermon last Sunday of Faith in its 
more general sense : first of faith as exercised by a 
child towards his parents ; and, afterwards, of reli- 
gious faith, according to that description of it in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is said, " that he who 
Cometh to God, must first believe that he is, and that 
he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him." 
I then proposed to speak more particularly of Chris- 
tian faith, and to show how this was the most perfect 
kind of all, and most powerful to give us the victory 
over all temptations. And it is this part of the sub- 
ject which I must now endeavour to lay before you as 
clearly as I am able. 

We must remember how faith was described to be 
a preferring some future and unseen good to a present 
and visible one, on the authority of some one whom 
we had reason to think good and wise. And we 
must remember also, that religious faith consisted in 
preferring future to present good things, on the au- 
thority of God himself; that is, of One who is per- 
I* 



18 SERMON IT. 

fectly wise and good. That is to say, we may sup- 
pose a man influenced by religious faith to say thus 
to himself : ''I know that the present temptation is 
very strong ; but then I have the promise of God, 
who cannot lie, that to serve him faithfully, will be 
better for me than anything else in the world ; and 
trusting to his word, I will forego the present pleasure, 
in the hope of that future blessing which he promises." 
It is plain that this faith or trust in God rests upon our 
belief of his goodness, wisdom, and power, however 
we may have gained our knowledge of these attri- 
butes ; and it will be readily seen, that in proportion 
as our impression of God's perfections is more lively, 
so will our readiness to trust to him entirely be 
stronger, and more unhesitating. This is no more 
than we see at once to be the case in our human rela- 
tions. It may be that a child who has never seen his 
father, may be very desirous to obey him, and to trust 
to his instructions, because he knows that he is his 
father, and has a general impression of his kindness 
and wisdom ; but it is clear that he would obey him 
much more readily, and rely upon his counsels much 
more fully, if he had a close personal knowledge of 
him, and had seen and experienced the excellencies 
of his character in a variety of particular instances. 

Christian faith, then, has this advantage over simple 
religious faith, in the more general sense of the word, 
that having obtained clearer and fuller notions of God's 
perfections, it is rendered stronger and more trium- 
phant over temptations. ^' Who is he that overcometh 
the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son 
of God ?" Even thev who do believe this, find the 



SERMON II. 19 

world sufficiently dangerous and the victory sufficiently 
difficult ; but they who have not this faith find the vic- 
tory more than difficult — it is altogether impossible. 
And they who have it in word only, or in whom it only 
exercises its power occasionally, will, practically, de- 
rive no greater benefit from it than those who have it 
not at all. 

Now Christian faith, or the faith that Jesus is the 
Son of God, gives us so much clearer and fuller notions 
of God, that it makes us know both him and ourselves, 
and love him, far better than we could do without it. 
We had a general notion, by mere religious faith, that 
God was a holy God, and that he must judge far dif- 
ferently of sin from the judgments that we are accus- 
tomed to pass on it. But Christian faith makes us say 
to ourselves, " I see now how very much God must abhor 
sin, since, without the precious blood of his own Son, 
there could be no remission for it." Again, natural re- 
ligion tells us that God is merciful ; but Christian faith 
makes us say, '' How can I be thankful enough to the 
infinite goodness of God, since he has given his only-be- 
gotten Son to die for me ?" Again, natural religion 
teaches us to think humbly of ourselves, and to look to 
God for strength to help us. But the Christian says, "If 
the only-begotten Son of God has died for me, it is 
clear that my own deeds could do nothing for me in 
God's judgment ; it is clear that they are too worthless 
to weigh a hair in the scale, when put with the infinite 
value of Christ's sacrifice. And if Christ has obtained 
for me, by his death and rising again, the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, it is clear that he that is with me is great- 
er than he that is against me, and that I may struggle 



20 SERMON II. 

with confidence against my temptations, knowing that 
in that struggle the Eternal Spirit of God will aid me." 
Further, the very simplest notions of God tell us, that 
holy things and holy places must not be profaned by 
the mixture of evil. But the Christian thinks, " My 
body is a holy thing, for God has redeemed it ; my 
heart is a holy place, for the Holy Ghost has made it 
his temple. Every evil, therefore, of thought, and 
word, and deed, profanes a thing set apart to God's 
special service ; profanes a place where God continu- 
ally dwells. Every lust, every evil and unkind pas- 
sion, is, therefore, a sacrilege." And then, if he turns 
to the temptations of the world, and casts the eye of 
faith towards that future and unseen recompense, 
which is promised him, he bethinks him at what price 
it was purchased for him, and by what infinite love it 
was given ; he feels, on the one hand, how worthless 
must be his own efforts to earn that which only the 
blood of the Son of God could buy ; yet, with that 
zealous hope he may labour, sure that God is mightily 
working in him, giving him an earnest will, and 
strengthening him to do steadily, what he has willed 
sincerely. 

This, then, is the faith that overcometh the world ; 
for it is a faith that looks to an eternal reward, and 
which is founded on such a display of God's love and 
holiness, that the Christian may well say, <' I know in 
whom I have believed." Conceive any one of us, old 
or young, having this faith, and do we not feel sure 
that it must overcome the world ? Do we not feel 
sure that all temptations must be powerless against 
him who is heartily persuaded of what God has done. 



SERMON II. 21 

and will do for him, who looks forward to the kingdom 
of heaven, and knows and feels by whose blood it has 
been thrown open to him ? Do we not see clearly, and 
do not our own hearts tell us, that if temptations are 
too strong for us it is because our faith is weak ? If 
the present pleasure beguiles us, is it not because the 
future blessing is one of which we do not feel quite 
sure ? Is it not because the love of Christ, in dying 
for us, is rather a sound familiar to our ears, than a 
reality, thoroughly impressed on our hearts and minds ? 
Have you not, in fact, so felt it to be, even while I have 
been now addressing you ? The sounds, the words 
which I have been using, are so familiar to your ears, 
that they seem uninteresting from their very triteness. 
Your attention would be ten times more aroused by the 
commonest story which 1 could tell you, about the 
commonest worldly interest ; yet, while the words are 
thus so familiar, the reality of them is altogether strange 
to you. If your attention has followed what I have 
said, I know that in much of it I shall have been as 
one who beateth the air ; that the love of God in Christ 
gives you really no distinct and lively idea : your 
hearts and minds do not take it in. Assuredly the faith 
which you find at once so uninteresting, and so hard 
to understand, cannot be the ruling principle of your 
lives : you cannot, in any sense, be walking by faith. 
And, therefore, I have thought that it might be well to 
say a few words in conclusion, as to the means of gain- 
ing this faith ; to tell you how you may, with God's 
blessing, come to understand it and to love it, and to 
act upon it, just as naturally as we now act every day, 
from some motive of worldly pleasure or pain. 



22 SERMON II. 

I dare say, that when I speak of the means of gain- 
ing this faith, you will know at once to what I am al- 
luding ; so impossible is it to say what you do not know 
already; as impossible, indeed, as it appears to be to 
make you feel it as well as know it. The means are 
principally three — reading the scripture, prayer, and a 
partaking of the Lord's supper. You see what it is 
that is wanted ; namely, to make notions wholly remote 
from your common life take their place in your minds, 
as more powerful than the things of common life ; — to 
make the future and the unseen prevail over what you 
see and hear now around you. I know, indeed, of one 
thing which would effect this in an instant. Let any 
of you be taken dangerously ill, let his prospects of 
earthly life be rendered less than uncertain, then he 
would soon think far more of the unseen world than of 
the world now around us. And it is certain, or at least 
all but certain, that some of you who now hear me 
will be thus reminded of another world — out of the 
number here assembled, it is certain that some will be 
cut off before they reach their prime. No one, who 
has left school ten years, will find that all who were 
his companions there are still alive : therefore, al- 
though taking you each separately, the probabilities 
are, that you will live on to the natural age of man ; 
yet, taking you all together, it is more than a proba- 
bility that you will not. But this is always one of 
those cases in which every one trusts that the chances 
will be in his own favour ; and this innate gambling 
spirit of human nature it is mostly vain to argue with. 
Your business is to gain for yourselves, with no risk, 
but to your infinite arid certain profit, that lively sense 



SERMON II. 23 

of unseen things, which sickness and sudden death 
may bring to you, when too late to save you. When 
I speak of Christ's love to you, those who know little 
of the New Testament feel that the words are to them 
hardly more than an empty sound : they have no dis- 
tinct impression of what Christ was and is. But this im- 
pression may be gained by reading about him ; it was 
one ^great end of his becoming man, and of his words 
and actions being so fully recorded, that we should be 
able 10 bring him before our minds as a real and living 
friend, that his character, his feelings — I had well 
nigh said his very person and manner — might be 
brought distinctly and vividly before us. And what 
a picture the history of Christ's life and death, as given 
in the Gospels, does really offer to us ! It cannot 
be said that it is hard or uninteresting ; on the con- 
trary, the story of his betrayal and crucifixion, in 
particular, is so full of the deepest interest, that I am 
sure if it were not so connected with thoughts of God, 
from which our inborn sense of sin makes us in- 
stinctively shrink, it would be read for the mere 
pleasure of the story. So, again, with the account of 
the raising of Lazarus, and of many other of our 
Lord's muracles ; and the same may be said of the 
perfect beauty of many of his parables and other dis- 
courses. By reading these often, we get clear and 
lively notions of our Saviour's character ; we learn 
unavoidably to love it. Then it is, I think, that the 
facts of his resurrection and ascension, and of his 
divine nature, come upon us with such exceeding 
comfort. If we have become deeply interested in any 
other character of ancient days, yet we feel, that after 



24 SERMON II. 

all, it is an interest about a thing that is past ; — the 
virtues which we admire, the character which we 
love, have no longer any existence with respect to 
ourselves. In whatever state the dead are reserved 
till the day of general resurrection, the veil is pur- 
posely drawn over their condition, that we might not 
seek to hold too close comm.union with them. But 
when, from a study of Christ's life in the flesh, we 
have learnt to admire and to love him, then, how de- 
lightful is the recollection, that over him death has 
had no power — that at this very moment he lives in 
the same human nature, the very self-same Jesus, in 
all tenderness, in all watchful care of his disciples, in 
all human affections and divine excellencies, as when 
he parted from his disciples at Bethany, and a cloud 
received him out of their sight. He was dead, but he 
liveth for evermore, and the Son of man is sitting at 
the right hand of God till he shall come to earth once 
more to complete the number of his redeemed. Say 
not, then, nor think, nor feel, that Christ was merciful, 
that he was all kindness and all wisdom, that he did 
many mighty works, and had the Spirit of his Father 
given him without measure ; but say, — and you will 
say truly, — and think, and feel, that he is merciful, 
that he is all kindness and all wisdom, that he does 
mighty works every day, — for all power is given to 
him in heaven and in earth : — that he has the Spirit 
of his Father, and daily distributes of it to his disciples, 
that so we may all receive of his fulness. These are 
the feelings which we may gain from the New Tes- 
tament. Faith will come by readings as of old time 
it came by hearing ; and when we have thus become 



SERMON 11. 25 

familiar with Christ, have learned to love him, and to 
know that he not only was^ but is now, a living object 
of our love, the prospect of being with him for ever 
•*will not seem like a vague promise of we know not 
what, but a real substantial pleasure, which we would 
not forfeit for all that the world can offer. 

But I have been led away by my subject, and find 
that there is not time to pursue it further : I must re- 
serve the other two means of acquiring Christian faith 
for consideration in another sermon. Only may God 
grant, that what I have hitherto said, may lead some 
of you, at least, to acquire a greater familiarity with 
the words and deeds of Christ ; that your own expe- 
rience might tell you whether I have over-valued the 
advantages of knowing them and loving them. 



SERMON III. 



JOHN VI. 58. 

This is the bread which came down from heaven ; not 
as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead : he 
that eateth of this bread shall live for ever, 

I MENTIONED in my last sermon, that there were three 
ordinary means of acquiring that faith which is so 
necessary to us, and of which we all of us have too 
little a portion. These three means were, reading 
the Scriptures, prayer, and the partaking of the Lord's 
supper. Of the first of these I spoke last Sunday ; I 
mentioned how, by reading the story of Christ's life 
and death in particular, we should bring the thought 
of him home to our minds as something of a reality ; 
and, when we had learnt to fancy and to love him as he 
was on earth, that then it was a comfort to think, that 
such as he had been on earth, such he now is at the 
right hand of God, with almighty power and infinite 
love ; and I earnestly recommended the making our- 
selves familiar with the words and deeds of Christ, as 
a first and most important step towards believing in 
him and loving him. Still it is but too certain, by 



SERMON III. 27 

every day's experience, that the reading of the Scrip- 
tures of itself is not sufficient ; that although faith 
may come at first by reading, yet it needs something 
else to sustain it ; in short, that it is very possible to 
know the Scriptures thoroughly, and yet not to have 
that faith which overcometh the world. Nay, I may 
go further : it is possible not only to know the Scrip- 
tures, but heartily to admire them ; not only to be 
familiar with Christ's words and actions, but to feel a 
great delight in and love for them ; and yet still not to 
have that saving, that victorious faith, of which St. 
John speaks in the words of my last Sunday's text. 
We cannot doubt Peter's familiar knowledge of his 
Lord, nor yet his lively recollection of his words, nor 
his warm affection for his person : yet, with all this, 
what is it that Christ said to him just before he was 
betrayed to be crucified ? — " Simon, Simon, behold, 
Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift thee 
as wheat ; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith 
fail not ; and, when thou art converted, strengthen 
thy brethren." What faith he had already was not 
sufficient to withstand the assaults of his enemy ; he 
was overcome, even to the denying of his Lord ; yet 
his faith, though weak, though far from overcoming 
the world, still, through Christ's prayer, was upheld 
from failing utterly. He recovered from his fall, and 
received a diviner strength ; and, when converted, he 
did indeed strengthen his brethren ; and not only his 
brethren who then were, but by his epistles, preserved 
for our instruction, he strengthens us also, and will 
continue to strengthen our children after us, even unto 
the end of the world. 



28 SERMON III. 

Let us take then ourselves, (and to how many in 
the world is the case applicable,) as being such as 
P^ter was when our Lord said these words to him. I 
do not mean to suppose our love to Christ to be half 
so warm as his was ; much rather, I believe, may we 
sympathize with the wish of one of the best and wisest 
men of the fifteenth century, (Wessel of Groningen,) 
" that we had so much love to Christ in these quiet 
times as Peter had, even when he cursed and swore, 
and denied his master." But I mean the likeness to 
extend thus far ; that we, like Peter, may have be- 
come familiar with our Lord's words and life, and 
may really have conceived a sincere admiration and 
love for them. Then it is that we need Christ's 
prayer for us, that our faith fail not ; then it is that 
Satan will sift us as wheat, will do with us whatever 
he will, unless Christ's prayer join with our prayer, 
and Christ's spirit enter into our spirits, to become our 
bread of life. 

" This is the bread which came down from heaven : 
not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead : he 
that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." Easy, 
most easy, is it to admire and love what is beautiful, 
and wise, and pure, and holy ; nay, it is even unnat- 
ural and monstrous not to admire it. But there is 
something more wanted than this, before we shall copy 
as well as admire ; and in this is the great point of all. 
It is not enough that we love the character of Christ : 
who can help loving it ? It must be something of a 
closer and more personal feeling, if I may so speak, 
that will make him become to us the bread of life ; 
and this feeling will only be gained by prayer. By 



SERMON III. 29 

prayer we speak to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ ; and we speak to him as needing his help and 
mercy. By prayer we express our sense of the real- 
ity of what we have read in the Scriptures ; we say, 
in fact, " Give to me. Lord, my own particular .por- 
tion in the blessings which the Scripture speaks of. 
I love what I read of Christ ; but I am so unlike him, 
that he cannot love me. I love his character ; but 
other feelings often come in much stronger than this 
love, so that I cannot be said to live in the love of 
him. What I want, thou. Lord, seest, and thou wilt 
give it to me also ; for though I have, as yet, no per- 
sonal experience in these matters, yet I know that the 
Scripture says we shall be heard if we pray to thee, 
and that thou wilt give thy Holy Spirit to them that 
ask it." It is an awful moment, a turning point often 
in our character for all eternity, when we first begin, in 
some such manner as this, to enter into a real commu- 
nion with God ; when our prayers first become, — I do 
not say sincere, for I should be very sorry to think 
they had not been, in many cases, sincere, even from 
earliest childhood, — but when they first proceed out 
of an awakened heart which feels more deeply what 
itself is, and what is God. It is astonishing how this 
sort of earnest prayer opens our eyes daily more and 
more, and strengthens our faith. A natural part of 
such prayer is confession ; we cannot but truly feel 
our unworthiness when we bring the most high and 
holy God present, in a manner, before us. We know 
then — we cannot help knowing — that we are naked. 
This calls up before our minds our particular and 
besetting sins ; those disguises of our real character, 



30 SERMON III. 

which self-love is so apt to throw over it, are all torn 
to pieces then ; we see ourselves nearly in the same 
light as a fair enemy would see us. And this alone, 
what a mighty point is it to gain ? How many of us 
(and this is the truer, in proportion as we are younger) 
are kept from day to day, without ever seeing ourselves 
truly as we are ! We think of our faults only to 
deny or to excuse them ; we dwell with pleasure on 
our good points, and the rest we are glad to pass over. 
But in prayer, and when kneeling, really with a sin- 
cere heart, before Him to whom all hearts are open, 
his Spirit, if I may so speak, becomes our own ; and we 
are all open and manifest before our own eyes, as before 
his. Then we turn to him to save us from this evil 
which we have discovered ; " Lord, forgive me ; Lord, 
help me to strive against my selfishness, my indolence, 
my pride, my unkindness, my carelessness, my love 
of pleasure, my lust, my covetousness, my ungodli- 
ness !" 

Each soul who now hears me, if he could but put 
himself for an instant into his state when he is sin- 
cerely praying, could tell at once, — his heart, whilst 
I have been naming these several sins, would answer 
at once to the touch of that or those particular ones 
to which he is himself in bondage, " Lord, help me to 
strive against it ; for Jesus Christ's sake, save me 
from it !" They are but a few words ; but how 
wholesome to the soul when said, as they are said 
in such prayer, with earnest sincerity ! Our atten- 
tion is drawn just to those very parts in ourselves 
which most need it : at every prayer the attention is 
renewed. We cannot help thinking, when we ask 



SERMON III. 31 

God in the evening to strengthen us against such and 
such a sin, whether we have committed it since we 
uttered the same prayer in the morning. If we have 
not, we are encouraged; if we have, we are justly 
ashamed ; and our prayer is the more earnest, that 
the next day we may be more watchful. Say that 
we fall again, (for infinite is our frailty,) that our 
sense of shame is deeper, our fear for the future just 
so great as to give the enemy of our souls an oppor- 
tunity of turning it into desperate carelessness : "It 
is a vain labour to try to mend." Then our famil- 
iarity with the Scripture comes in time to tell us, 
" that if any man sin, we have an advocate with the 
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the pro- 
pitiation for our sins;" and to encourage us to re- 
newed efforts by assuring us, " that he who cometh 
to Christ, Christ will in no wise cast out." 

The same knowledge of the Scripture brings rap- 
idly before our mind all the promises which we most 
need. It reminds us that we must be earnest in 
prayer, and not faint ; that the kingdom of God is 
like the seed, which grew up in its appointed season, 
though it showed no signs of life at once ; that he who 
shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. 
All these, and many other such texts, we now lay 
hold of with a personal interest. We now feel their 
value. The words of Christ, in this our daily strug- 
gle with our sins, are now, indeed, becoming to us 
our bread of life. While I repeat the words, those 
who have attended to what I have been saying, will 
feel their true import ; they will feel that, in such 
circumstances, they would go to Christ's life and 



32 SERMON III. 

words, and find in them a real effectual support to 
their souls, just as they have found the cheering and 
strengthening effect of food to their bodies, when en- 
gaged in any great and fatiguing exercise of body or 
mind — That, amidst these prayers, thus repeated, a 
wonderful change is effected within us ; that our dis- 
positions are greatly softened and sweetened ; that 
our views of life and death become different ; our in- 
terest in earthly things less engrossing ; our selfish- 
ness generally less intense ; all this is a matter of 
actual experience ; of most blessed experience to those 
who can confirm it from within themselves ; but of 
recorded experience also in the lives of Christians, 
such as we may either have known them ourselves, 
or may have read of them. And that this change, 
so real and so visible, is the work of the Holy Spirit 
of God, — of the manner of which we can see and 
know nothing, but whose effects both we and all the 
world can witness, — this we learn from the Scrip- 
tures ; and it forms one of the great and most conso- 
ling truths of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Un- 
questionably, where this change is wrought, faith 
overcometh the world. The good things which God 
has prepared for them that love him ; his love to us 
in Christ Jesus ; the abiding influence of his Spirit ; 
all these are things which our prayers have made 
quite familiar, not to our ears only, but also to our 
hearts : they are things which have become the great 
interest of our lives, and we live in the daily con- 
sciousness of their reality. 

But what if these blessed effects do not follow ; — 
what if our faith is still weak, and the world is not 



SERMON III. 33 

overcome ; — that is, if the temptations of the world 
are still too much for us, and earthly hopes, and 
fears, and affections, still reign within our bosoms 
with far greater sway than the love of God ? What 
shall we say to this ? Is God's promise not sure ? Is 
our labour ail in vain ? Or is it an empty dream 
that the Holy Spirit of God will ever deign to abide 
with the corrupt spirit of man ? Shall we be care- 
less or desperate, or rush to that most deadly snare of 
all, and say that we are fated to be as we are, and we 
cannot help it ? All these are questions which arise 
from not enough bracing our minds to the belief of 
this great truth, that our struggle with evil must last 
to the very latest hour of our continuance in the body. 
Who told us that our victory would be won with less 
than half a life's labour ; that our first efforts would 
be successful ; and that we should be partakers of the 
rest that remaineth for the people of God, ere yet the 
sun had begun to slope from his meridian — ere the 
first shades of evening had arisen around us ? We 
must learn another and a harder lesson, or else indeed 
we shall lose the victory for ever. Is our faith still 
weak ; — let us take heed that our prayers have not 
been less frequent or less zealous. Is the world still 
too much for us ; — let us take heed that we have not 
thrown away some portion of our defence ; that we 
have not been imprudent, to say the least of it ; that 
we have not used the world even so as to abuse it ; 
that we have not let the weeds and the thorns of earthly 
riches, pleasures, and honours, grow too unchecked 
and rankly. Let us measure our years, if we are 
young or in the vigour of manhood, at once for en- 

2 



34 SERMON III. 

couragement and for warning ; if we see how little 
progress we have hitherto made, let us take heed lest 
we should feel the same when all our threescore years 
and ten are over ; for the despair that would be most 
sinful now, will be too just and too certain then. And 
let us know, that if we indulge the spirit of careless- 
ness now, this despair will come, — our years will pass 
away unnoted, till gone for ever. But if our hearts 
are only unreasonably fearful, if we expected to con- 
quer sin with too little effort, think of the portion of 
our lives that yet remains, think to what precious 
purposes it may be applied, and that he were but a 
foolish and faint-hearted traveller who expected to 
reach the end of his journey before half his day was 
oven 



SERMON IV. 



ACTS II. 42. 

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles^ doctrine 
and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers. 

In speaking of Christian faith, I mentioned that there 
were three principal means of acquiring it : namely, 
reading the Scriptures, prayer, and a partaking of 
the Lord's supper. I have spoken of the two first of 
these, and I now propose to speak of the third ; to 
which I may the better ask for your attention, as the 
communion is so soon to be here administered. 
Would that you might feel that communion to be as 
great a blessing as it really is ; that you might, like 
the first Christians spoken of in the text, continue 
" stedfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and 
in breaking of bread, and in prayers." 

" The breaking of bread," here spoken of, was the 
Lord's supper, which is often mentioned under this 
name in different parts of the New Testament. It 
appears to have been celebrated as a real supper, as 
a sort of Christian feast ; which we may perceive 



36 SERMON IV. 

from St. Paul's language to the Corinthians, where 
he charges them with profaning it, by not only ma- 
king it like a common feast, but dishonouring it by 
actual riot and intemperance, such as would be sinful 
at even the commonest feast. But it is clear from 
the very faults into w^hich the early Christians fell 
with respect to the Lord's supper, that they were in 
the habit of celebrating it very often ; and though In 
some cases, as at Corinth, it was celebrated very un- 
worthily, yet we must not suppose that this was so 
always. Those Philippians and Thessalonians, of 
whom St. Paul speaks so highly, were likely to re- 
ceive the communion of the Lord's supper not less 
often than the Corinthians ; but in a very different 
manner, and with very different effects. To them, as 
to the first disciples at Jerusalem, mentioned in my 
text, it was a true remembrance of Christ's death ; 
the bread which they brake, the cup which they 
drank, were a true partaking of Christ's body and 
blood. To them, in short, the communion w^as a 
powerful means of grace, and helped, under God's 
blessing, to increase their faith. 

May it be so to us also ; and it will be, if the fault 
is not our own. It will be a means of grace : I beg 
attention to the words ; for this is a point very neces- 
sary to be understood, in order to avoid a superstition 
as foolish as it is mischievous. " It is the Spirit that 
quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing :" that is, it is 
not the consecrated bread and wine that have any 
virtue in themselves, for that would be to make them 
like a charm ; but it is the state of mind, which the 
preparation for and partaking in this ordinance im- 



SERMON IV. 37 

plies, and is so well fitted to produce, which is so 
highly to be desired, and which tends to strengthen 
and confirm our faith. When, therefore, persons 
who never or very seldom receive the communion in 
health, are anxious to partake of it before they die, I 
am afraid that this desire is very often a mere deceiv- 
ing superstition. They do not go to it as a means of 
grace ; but as a means of gaining them pardon with- 
out grace, — as a means by which they may be saved 
without having in their lives heartily turned to God. 
And this is to make the communion a gross supersti- 
tion ; it is, in fact, to regard it as if it were a charm. 
In life and health it will assuredly make us better, if 
we habitually attend it ; but who will dare to say 
that it can make us better on our death-beds, when 
we have neither the time nor the power of mind to 
complete so mighty a work as that of repentance, or 
a change of heart and desires from evil to good ? The 
rain and the sunshine are the appointed means by 
which the fruits of the earth are ripened ; but, in 
order to do their work, they must be sent in their 
proper season. They will make the seed spring up, 
they will encourage its growth, and ripen it for the 
harvest ; but of what use are they where the seed has 
never been sown at all, or where the soil has been so 
light or so foul that it has never been able to spring 
up, or to reach its full growth ? Even so, the com- 
munion of the Lord's supper is as useless as the rain 
and sunshine upon the desert or the sea, where there 
are no good principles within us which it may 
strengthen and increase, or where the time is so short 
that its power can never sufiiciently develop itself. 



38 SERMON IV. 

But this is not the case with you : with you it is yet 
the spring time, not yet too late for the rain and 
warmth of heaven to produce on the seed their full 
effect. You have yet the opportunity of using the 
means of grace to your great benefit, if you will but 
choose to avail yourselves of them. Begin now the 
habit of '' continuing stedfast in the apostles' doctrine 
and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in 
prayers." Begin it, if it be still to be begun : go on 
with it, if you have been happy enough to have al- 
ready entered upon it. Do I call the hard and the 
careless among you to come next Sunday to the 
Lord's table, and there with hearts at once ungodly 
and superstitious, at once unbelieving and foolishly 
believing, to receive a morsel of bread and a few 
drops of wine, which to them would be far less profit- 
able than the commonest food on the commonest occa- 
sion of daily life ? God forbid ! It were a deceit of 
the most cruel kind to call such persons : it were 
most wicked to encourage them to receive as whole- 
some and strengthening food what to them would be 
a fatal poison. For, undoubtedly, the heart is not 
improved, but injured by acts of superstition ; the 
holiest things cannot be trifled with, but are a savour 
of death unto death, if they are not a savour of life 
unto life. And, therefore, I have not lately urged 
any of you in private to go to the communion, lest it 
might be possible that you should go out of human 
respects, rather than from a real desire to benefit 
yourselves. In fact, one feels on this point a great 
difficulty ; one knows not how to urge you personally 
and separately to come, nor how to leave every thing 



SERMON IV. 39 

unsaid, as if it mattered not in our estimate whether 
you came or no. But when I saw the comparatively 
small number that did attend the last time when the 
sacrament was administered, I felt sure that we ought 
not to be silent altogether, nor rest contented with 
such a state of things, without trying at least to mend 
it. I wished that another opportunity might be offered 
you, that if it were from accident in a manner that so 
many of you had then turned away from the Lord's 
table, and if since that time any circumstances had 
led your minds to a better state, that the means of 
grace might be placed within your reach at an early 
period, in order to confirm the good impression. God 
alone can tell, when, and from what seemingly slight 
causes, feelings of repentance and faith may arise 
within us : and, therefore, that communion which is 
the best support of weakness, the best encouragement 
to our first endeavours after goodness, ought not to be 
long together withheld from your reach. It may be, 
that an impression which otherwise might have been 
soon worn out may be thus fixed for ever : it may be 
that the spiritual food thus offered at the very hour 
of need, may be indeed the bread of life. I call then, 
not upon the hard and utterly careless, but upon 
those, whoever and how many soever they are, who 
have at any rate received the good seed ; who have 
sometimes thought of their souls ; who have, if it be 
no more than felt, one honest wish that they had a 
share in Christ's redemption. Let that one wish be 
encouraged ; and let him who has felt it resolve to 
come to the supper of Christ, that he may feel it again 
and for ever. And I earnestly call upon all those 



40 SERMON IV. 

who hear me, into whose hearts such thoughts have 
entered, to come without regard to any such consider- 
ation as the place which they happen to hold in 
school. Entirely separate as the communion here is 
from all school regulations, and earnestly as we en- 
deavour to abstain from any mere human and personal 
influence to persuade you to come, I have the more 
right to entreat you in your turn not to let such an 
idle reason as that of being in a lower part of the 
school prevent you from getting for your souls the - 
help which they need. Nay, I would even say, what 
the church fully authorizes me in saying, let not your 
not having been confirmed restrain you ; above all, 
take care that you do not make it an hypocritical 
excuse for putting off a little longer the duty of serious 
thought and self-examination. The church says, 
that no one shall come to the communion until he be 
confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed. 
And, now in these days, when the opportunities of 
confirmation occur so seldom, and when, in the case 
of those who go early abroad, years may pass before 
they can receive it, v/e cannot be justified in willingly 
depriving ourselves of a great means of grace, on 
such a reason as this. But we see many, far too 
many, who have been confirmed, and who have no 
such excuse to plead, still turning away, time after 
time, from the communion that is offered to them. I 
would not, and do not, reckon all these among the 
hard and utterly careless ; that, indeed, were not less 
unreasonable, than it would be shocking to be obliged 
so to reckon them : but I do tell them that they are 
tempting God to make them hard and careless ; that 



SERMON IV. 41 

they are playing with their own destruction ; and that 
it is no light thing whether good thoughts are habitu- 
ally neglected or stifled, or whether they be enter- 
tained and carefully improved. It is no light thing, 
that the impressions which you may sometimes re- 
ceive in this place should vanish almost as soon as 
you go out of its doors. You may not be hard now, — 
none of you, I trust, are so ; but you will assuredly 
soon become so, if you go on neglecting the means of 
becoming otherwise. Of all deadly errors, I know of 
none so widely mischievous as that notion that we 
can repent at any time ; that it is always in our 
power to be good. Undoubtedly we can always, 
with God's blessing, repent if we loill ; but it is that 
very will to repent which we are surely destroying 
by a continual perseverance in unholiness. The ap- 
petite for good is as surely destroyed by long-continued 
habits of evil, as the appetite for our wholesome bodily 
food by a long continuance of bodily excesses. 

Once more, then, I entreat all those w^ho have had 
any serious thoughts and wishes to be good, to resolve 
to seize the means of grace nov/ offered. Pray that 
as Christ invites you to partake in the outw^ard signs 
of his redemption, so you may be made one with him 
in heart and in spirit, and may be partakers of his 
redemption in deed. Remember that ^^as often as 
we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do show the 
Lord's death till he come." It brings to our minds 
the night just before Christ was betrayed, when he 
was assembled with his disciples, and holding to them 
that language of counsel and of comfort which has 
been recorded by vSt. John from the tliirteenth to the 
2* 



42 SERMON IV. 

seventeenth chapters of his gospel, for our everlasting 
benefit. While we read those words, we feel as if, 
had we been with Christ's first disciples at that last 
supper, w^e could have resigned our whole souls with- 
out reserve into the care of our gracious Saviour. 
*'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my 
head;" — every affection, every desire, every hope 
and thought of our nature, let them be w^holly thine, 
and purified by thy blessed Spirit. We feel as if in- 
deed we could lay down our lives for his sake; we 
feel that we do then believe. But, my brethren, it is 
no vain superstition, it is no extravagant fancy, but 
the very simple truth, that if we, with contrite and 
humble hearts, do meet together at that holy table, 
there indeed is Christ in the midst of us; there is his 
Spirit shedding down upon us the peace that passeth 
all understanding, and enkindling within us a strength 
of holy resolutions, and an entireness of resignation to 
the will of God, such as we might have felt at that 
last supper, when our Lord w^as yet amongst us in the 
body. Not manifest indeed to the world, not manifest 
to any who approach his table with careless hearts; 
Judas sat with him, and saw him with his bodily eyes, 
and ate of the bread and drank of the cup; but Christ's 
Spirit was not manifest to him; and it is the Spirit 
alone that quickeneth. Even so his bodily presence 
would profit us nothing: his Spirit is as truly with 
his faithful disciples now, when they eat and drink 
the bread and the wine in remembrance of him, as it 
was with his eleven faithful disciples, whom he then 
pronounced to be clean. Not clean indeed from all 
imperfect ion, not saved from all future sin and error, 



SERMON IV. 43 

nor must we expect to be so; but strengthened to be- 
come better than they had been; not provided with 
an entire security against evil, but gifted with a more 
willing heart, and a firmer faith, to strive against it. 



SERMON V. 



[PREACHED ON ASH WEDNESDAY.] 

1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 11. 

When I ivas a child, I spake as a child, I understood 
as a child, I thought as a child : hut when I became 
a man, I put aioay childish things. 

These words contain the reason why so many of the 
sermons delivered from the pulpit in our own times, 
and our own country, produce so little effect upon their 
hearers. They are the address of a man who speaks 
and thinks in one way, to persons who speak and think 
in another. It is only by experience that we find 
what strong barriers are raised by age, by education, 
by manners of living, between one class of men and 
another ; so that what are the most natural and familiar 
thoughts to one set of persons, are to another strange 
and unnatural, and quite above their understanding. 
But the words of the apostle, although they will suit 
a great many other cases, are more particularly suited 
to ours, who are now here assembled : " When I was a 
child, I thought, spake, and understood as a child ; but 



\ 



SERMON V. 41 

when I became a man, I put away childish things." 
And so it is daily found to be : we not only put them 
away, but forget them ; insomuch that it is sometimes 
as hard for a man to put himself again into the place 
of a boy, and to remember what he once was, as it is 
for a boy to imagine what he will be when he becomes 
a man, of which he has hitherto had no experience at 
all. Our Lord himself seems, in one place, to speak 
of this particular difficulty which his ministers would 
meet with ; the difficulty of making themselves under- 
stood by their hearers. ''Every scribe," he says, 
"who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is 
like unto a man that is an householder, who bringeth 
forth out of his treasure things new and old : " that is, 
as the people whom he will speak to are so different, 
he must be furnished with something to say to all of 
them ; with things new and old ; with things plain and 
things learned ; with things solemn and things familiar ; 
with things of heaven and things of earth. However 
good what he says may be of itself, it is worth nothing 
for practice, if it be not also suited to the particular 
understandings and feelings of those he is speaking to. 
It is not enough to speak of sin in general, and holiness 
in general ; of God and Christ, of death and judgment. 
Something more clear and distinct is wanted; or else 
we do but fill the ears of our hearers with empty 
words, rather than bring home to their minds any 
truths that will do them good. You know very well 
that your faults are not those which you read of most 
in books ; for books were written by men, and, in gen- 
eral, are intended to be read by men : they speak, 
therefore, mostly of the sins and temptations of man- 



46 SERMON V. 

hood, — of covetousness, ambition, injustice, pride, and 
other older vices, — with which you feel that you have as 
yet but small concern. Besides, the pulpit is a solemn 
and sacred place; whereas the matters with which 
you are daily engaged are so common and so humble, 
that it seems like a want of reverence to speak of them 
in a sermon plainly by their names. And yet, if we 
do not speak of them plainly by their names, half of 
what we say wdll be lost in the air. I purpose, then, 
with God's help, now, and, perhaps, at some future 
times also, during this season of Lent w^hich is now 
begun, to say something to you all about your own 
particular state and dangers; nor shall I care how 
plain and familiar is the language I use, as it is my 
wish to speak in such a manner that the youngest boy 
amongst you may understand, if he chooses to listen 
and to attend. 

It is now a little more than a week ago, since there 
was read in this chapel the story of Adam eating the 
forbidden fruit, and being on that account driven out 
of paradise, and made liable to death. This story tells 
us how the first man that ever lived became a sinner ; 
and we know, if we look into our own hearts with any 
care and sincerity, that we shall find enough that is 
sinful in ourselves. That this is so generally, — that 
bad, if left to itself, is too strong for good, and that the 
geatest number are apt to follow the bad rather than the 
good, — men learn every year of their lives more fully, 
by their experience of the world around them ; but you 
too have had some experience of it already. Several 
of you are only just come to this place; some of you 
were never at any school at all till you came here. 



SERMON V. 47 

Some of you, at least, and I hope very many, have 
had the blessing of good parents at home ; you have 
been taught to hear of God and of Christ; to say your 
prayers, and to remember that wherever you are, and 
whatever you are doing, God ever sees you. You 
have seen in your own house nothing base, nothing 
cruel, nothing ill-natured, and, especially, nothing false. 
You thought a lie was one of the most hateful things in 
the world ; and that to give up to your brothers and 
sisters, and to please your parents, was a great deal 
better than to be always quarrelling and envying, and 
to think of pleasing no one but yourselves. I hope and 
believe that many of you before you came to school, 
w^ere thus taught, and that the teaching was not in 
vain ; that you not only heard of what was good, but, 
on the whole, practised it. But how is it with you 
now ? I am afraid I dare not ask those who have been 
here so much as one half year or more : but even if I 
were to ask those who have not yet been here so much 
as one month, what sort of an answer could you give, 
if you answered truly ? Do you think of God now ? 
Do you remember that he ever, and in every place, 
sees w^hat you are doing ? Do you say your prayers 
to him? Do you still think that lying, and all those 
shuffling dishonest excuses, which are as bad as lying, 
are base, and contemptible, and wicked? — or have 
you heard these things so often from others, even if 
you yourselves have not been guilty of them, that you 
think there cannot be any great harm in them ? Do 
you still love to be kind to your companions, never 
teasing or ill-treating them, and never being ill-natured 
and out of temper with them ? — or have you already 



48 SERMON V. 

been accustomed to the devilish pleasure of giving 
pain to others ; and, whilst you are yourselves teased 
and ill-used by some who are stronger than you, do 
you repeat the very same conduct to those who are 
weaker than you? Are you still anxious to please 
your parents; and, in saying your lessons, do you still 
retain the natural thought of a w^ell-bred and noble 
disposition, that you would like to say them as well as 
you can, and to please those who teach you? — or 
have you already learnt the first lesson in the devil's 
school, to laugh at what is good, and generous, and 
high principled, and to be ashamed of doing your duty ? 
Now if you have been wholly or in part corrupted in 
these points, within one short month, so that the good 
learnt in ten or twelve years has been overthrown in 
less than thirty days ; — and if this has happened not to 
one or two only, who might happen to be weak, and 
easily led into evil, but, more or less, to all of you, and, 
in a greater degree, generally speaking, to those who 
have been here for a longer period ; — if, in short, you 
all find that you would be afraid to speak and act just as 
you ought to do, because you would be laughed at and 
disliked if you did ; — then you have already had some 
experience of the truth of what the Bible tells us, that 
man's nature is corrupt and bad; and you can un- 
derstand somewhat of the meaning of those texts which 
speak of the world as being opposed to God, and that 
its friendship is enmity with God. It shows you plain- 
ly, how strong must be our evil dispositions, when you 
see them, in so short a time, getting the better of those 
that have had ten or twelve years to ripen ; it shows 
you, too, how much the world is opposed to God; that 



SERMON V. 49 

is, the opinions and practices of a number of persons, 
living together in one society, — because you see a 
number of boys, who, while living at home, or by 
themselves, might go on very well, and think and act 
very rightly, yet, as soon as they mix with one another, 
and form one large body, the opinions and influence of 
that body shall be bad. Every boy brings some good 
with him, at least, from home, as well as some evil; 
and yet you see how very much more catching the 
evil is than the good, or else you would make one 
another better by mixing together : and if any single 
boy did anything wrong, it would be condemned by the 
general opinion of all the school, just as some wrong 
things, such as stealing money, for example, are con- 
demned at present. You have learnt, then, or at least, 
you have had the experience, and may have leai^nt, if 
you chose, how easily you are tempted to do wrong, 
and how apt the world is to tempt you : for, as I said 
before, the society in which we live is the world ; and, 
therefore, school is the world to you, just as our town 
and neighbourhood and acquaintance, and all those who 
hear or know anything about us, are the world to each 
of us in after life. And if you find, and sometimes, 
perhaps, feel sorry within yourselves, that it is so hard 
to be good; that you are so easily tempted to evil, 
and that the world about you is so apt to tempt you ; — 
and yet, although you are thus sorry not to be better, 
you still are, in fact, no better; — then you are under 
what St. Paul calls the service and bondage of sin ; 
that is, your lives are sinful, whether you like it or 
no ; and, being sinful, lead you to dislike God, and to 
fear him, without the fear doing you any good, and* 



50 SERMON V. 

thus make you liable to his heavy judgments. And 
it was a man in this state whom St. Paul makes justly 
to cry out, from a strong feeling of his misery, " O 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from 
the body of this death?'' 



SERMON VI. 



JOHN III. 12. 

If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, 
how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things ? 

iN^'what I said to you on Wednesday from this place, 
I tried to bring clearly before your minds the mean- 
ing of those expressions which you will meet with in 
the Bible, and in other religious books, — that our 
nature is corrupt, and that we are all inclined to sin 
much more than to goodness. I tried to show you 
how you had already had experience of this, by find- 
ing how much easier it is to lose good habits than to 
gain them ; to unlearn your duty than to learn it. I 
said, too, that you ought not at all to content your- 
selves with merely being sorry for not being better ; 
but that you should recollect how St. Paul speaks of 
such a state as being a bondage, as being a wretched 
captivity, in which sin had bound him fast to his de- 
struction, and would have kept him a prisoner for 
ever, in spite of all his wishing, now and then, that 
he were better, had he not been delivered through 
Jesus Christ. And I said, in conclusion, that if you 



52 SERMON VI. 

could bring yourselves really to feel this, then you 
were ripe for the great message of God which is 
called the Gospel ; namely, the message in which he 
tells us that he has sent his Son into the world, that 
the world through him might be saved. 1 said, that 
you were ripe for the great message of God, if you 
could bring yourselves really to feel this ; but I know 
full well how much there is in this if ; no less, in- 
deed, to speak shortly, than the whole work of your 
salvation. To say, ' If you can bring yourselves 
really to feel your sin and danger,' is to say, ' If your 
hearts can be changed, by the Spirit of God, from 
stony, or shallow, or choked up with weeds and briars, 
to that soft, and strong, and clean soil, in which the 
seed of eternal life will spring forth fruit an hundred 
fold.' Nothing, indeed, can be more easy than to tell 
you of the salvation offered by Christ Jesus ; — that he 
died for us, and rose again ; and that, having over- 
come the sharpness of death, he has opened the king- 
dom of heaven to all believers. I could tell you this, 
as you have often heard it before ; and the words 
would seem so old and familiar to your ears, that 
you could hardly fix your attention on them : while 
the thing itself would be so strange and foreign to all 
your feelings and notions, that you would not bring it 
home to your hearts and lives. Our Lord had been 
speaking to Nicodemus about his sinful nature, and 
the necessity of its being changed ; and even then 
Nicodemus did not enter into his meaning. Much 
less, then, could he enter into the great doctrine of 
salvation through Christ ; he could not attend to what 
was said of the means of curing him, if he did not feel 



SERMON VI. 53 

that he was sick. And, therefore, Christ well said to 
him, " If I have told you earthly things, and you be- 
lieve not, how shall you believe, if I tell you of heav- 
enly things ?" 

This, then, is the difficulty — how to make you, par- 
ticularly the youngest among you, understand and 
enter into the truths of the Gospel. It is not that they 
are, properly speaking, hard to be understood ; it is 
not, like some hard matter of science, or some very 
difficult passage in a book, which you really are not 
old enough to understand, if you were to try ever so 
earnestly. The words in which religious truths are 
taught are as plain to you as to me. You know what 
is meant by death, and heaven, and hell, and repent- 
ance, and salvation, when you hear them spoken of: 
but the truth is, you do not care to think about them, 
because you have no interest about them. Generally 
speaking, we can understand and do well what we 
are fond of; however dull we may be about things 
that we dislike. You know how common it is to see 
a boy very dull about his lessons, yet very quick and 
active in other things. Now he is dull about his les- 
sons, because he does not like them ; because his 
mind is, as it were, asleep to them, and wakes up for 
things which he likes better. Real dulness of under- 
standing shows itself in a very different way, and is, 
in comparison, very uncommon. If a boy is heavy 
and slow at all times, — dull at his plays as well as at 
his work, unable to amuse himself, and seeming to 
enjoy nothing but the lowest pleasures of all, eating, 
drinking, and sleeping, — then, indeed, we may say 
that the fault is, in a great measure, in his under- 



54 SERMON VI, 

standing — that he wants the power as well as the will. 
But, in the things of religion, it is the will that we all 
want, and not the power ; it is the appetite for our 
spiritual food, and nothing else, that is required ; it is 
our hearts that are sick and weak, rather than our 
understandings. And what is it by which we can 
make them strong ? What is it. indeed, and who can 
give it us ? No friend, no teacher, no minister of the 
Gospel ; no parent, however watchful, however ten- 
derly affectionate. No man can deliver his brother, 
no friend his friend, no parent his child. All that the 
utmost care and kindness of man, or even of angel, 
could do in our behalf, is to point out the spring of 
the water of life : but to drink it depends upon your- 
selves only : and to desire to drink it depends on the 
gift of the Spirit of God. If we are sick and weak, 
and our appetite for our food is gone, it is of no use 
to tell us to eat, or to put food before us : we must 
first get the appetite, and then we shall eat naturally 
and healthfully. And we know that there are means 
by which our appetite, when lost, may be regained. 
If we are sick and weak, it does not follow that we 
shall never be well and strong, if we use those means 
which common sense, and the experience of others, 
have told us to be useful. So also there are means 
by which the appetite of our souls may be recovered ; 
there is a way by which they may become well and 
strong : and common sense, and the experience of all 
good men, and the word of God himself, has declared 
to us what these means are. You all know that I 
speak of the habit of prayer : you want the will to 
come to Christ ; you want to love good more strongly 



SERMON VI. 55 

than you now love it ; you want to love it so much as 
never to love any sin better. But you want what 
neither others nor yourselves, by yourselves, can give 
you. ^' No man can come unto God, unless God will 
draw him." You may say, ' Perhaps he will not 
draw me ; and, therefore, I never shall be able to 
come to him.' Nay, but hear his own promise, as it 
was read to you this very morning in this place : — 
" No father will give his son a stone when he asks 
for bread ; and if we, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts unto our children," — if you know, by ex- 
perience, how kind are your earthly parents, how 
much they would give up for your good, how care- 
fully they would do all in their power to benefit you, 
— " how much more shall your Father that is in hea- 
ven give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?" 

Be assured that no request which you can make to 
the kindest of earthly fathers will ever be so sure to 
be readily granted as the request which you make to 
your heavenly Father, that he will teach you to love 
him. Pray to him constantly for his help to open 
your eyes, and soften your hearts ; and be sure that 
such prayers will not be in vain. Pray to him to 
show you what he thinks of the evil that you are 
every day committing, and to make you think of it in 
the same manner ; and, depend upon it, that you will 
judge of it, ere long, very differently from what you 
now do. And this is in your own power. You can, 
if you choose, bend your knees, and utter words to 
God ; you can speak to him in your hearts at certain 
seasons, whether you have opportunity to bend your 
knees or no. You can make a point of so speaking to 



56 SERMON VI. 

him every day ; of forcing yourselves to do it, if you 
cannot do it vi^illingly ; and then, if you go on in this 
way, merely resolving and practising to speak to God, 
— I care not in how few words, so that they are the 
words of your own hearts, — asking him to be merci- 
ful to you, and to make you his own true children,— 
be assured that the will and the love of his service 
will very soon be given to your prayers, and you will 
be brought, by the Holy Spirit, to know and to love 
the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ. 



SERMON VII. 



2 KINGS II. 24. 

There came forth two she tears out of the wood, and 
tare forty and two children of them. 

I SAID, some time since, that as the Bible was wiitten 
chiefly for grown-up persons, and the faults of grown- 
up persons are different from those of boys, so many 
things that are said in the Bible may seem not directly 
to concern you. And, in particular, what is difficult 
for all to form to themselves any full notion of, is, in 
the case of the young, still harder to enter into fully : 
I mean, the great consequence of what we do ; the 
very great rewards that will follow it, if good : and 
the equally great punishments which it will bring 
upon us, if bad. This, I say, is hard for every one 
to conceive : and it is well said, that the very first 
temptation ever offered to men, took advantage of this 
common feeling : " The serpent said unto the woman, 
Ye shall not surely die.'' But it is still harder for 
you to fancy that your conduct can be either so im- 
mensely rewarded, or so heavily punished, because it 
seems to relate to things of such little consequence. 
3 



68 SERMON VIL 

You may hear grown-up people talk afterwards, iJi a 
laughing manner, of the faults which they committed 
at school, — of their idleness, and of the various acts 
of mischief, and worse than mischief, which they com- 
mitted. They speak of their school faults as of things 
which, indeed, it was very proper for the master to 
punish, when he found them out ; but which, if he 
did not find them out, were never in danger of being 
punished by any one else. And when boys hear older 
people speak in this manner of their own past conduct, 
it naturally makes them think that it does not really 
matter much whether they behave well or ill at school, 
excepting always in certain points which they think 
are dishonourable ; and that they are just as likely to 
be respectable and amiable men hereafter, if they are 
idle and careless now, as if they were ever so atten- 
tive and industrious. 

Now, I would beg those who think so to attend a 
little to the story in the text : — As Elisha, the prophet, 
was going up to Bethel, " there came forth little chil- 
dren out of the city, and mocked him, and said to him. 
Go up, thou bald head ; go up, thou bald head. And 
he turned back and looked on them, and cursed them 
in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two 
she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two 
children of them.'^ Now, some say that the word 
which is here translated " little children,'^ means rather 
" boys, or young men ;" but however this be, it is cer- 
tain, (and that is the point to which I want to bring 
you,) that the persons thus heavily punished were per- 
sons not grown up to manhood ; they had all the ex- 
cuse that youth could give them. And the offence too 



SERMON VII. 59 

was probably one which we should call rather care- 
lessness and idle mischief, than deliberate wickedness. 
They insulted Elisha, just as I am afraid that persons, 
with any thing in their appearance at all strange or 
remarkable, are sometimes insulted now. It was Eli- 
sha's baldness which they laughed at, in the very 
spirit of idle boys, at all times, and in all countries. 
They laughed at him too as a prophet ; just in the 
way that congregations of Methodists, for example, 
have been sometimes laughed at and disturbed among 
us, and their singing and preaching made a jest of. 
But for this offence, we are told that the prophet cursed 
them in the name of the Lord, and that " there came 
forth two bears out of the wood, and tare forty and 
two children of them." The point for you to observe 
is, that God is angry with the faults of young persons 
as with those of grown-up men, and that he punishes 
them as heavily. Of course, the rest of the story is 
not applicable : God's punishments are not now pun- 
ishments upon our bodies in this life, but punishments 
upon our immortal bodies after the resurrection, when 
we shall all be called before the judgment-seat of 
Christ. And a man, who, being thus insulted, were 
to curse those who were insulting him, and to wish 
for God's judgments upon them, would certainly now 
be a great deal worse than the boys who had provoked 
him. But this is not our concern ; nor are we con- 
sidering the conduct of Elisha, but the punishment 
inflicted by God upon those who had offended him, 
and which is recorded in the Scriptures for our ex- 
ample. 
^ I take this story, then, as teaching us what I think 



60 SERMON Vll. 

we very much need to be taught, namely, that the 
faults of our youth, and those which are most natural 
to us at that age, are not considered by God as trifling, 
but are punished by him after the same measure as the 
sins of men. And it is very easy to explain why men 
should often speak of them as trifling, and look back 
upon their own conduct at school with little or no con- 
cern. The reason is, because they measure the guilt 
of faults by the harm which they do in this world, and 
not by the harm which they do in unfitting us for the 
kingdom of God, by making us unlike God and Christ. 
Now it is very certain that the faults of boys do not do 
any very great harm in the world ; when boys ill- 
treat one another, it is very seldom that the injury is so 
serious as to be felt in after life ; when they lie, the 
consequence of their lie is, perhaps, no more than to 
save themselves from punishment ; when they are ex- 
travagant and run in debt, it is very often only to the 
amount of a few shillings, which it does not seriously 
inconvenience their friends to pay. Nay, when they 
are idle, it very often happens that their worldly in- 
terest in after life does not seriously suffer from it. 
Men then, feeling that their own faults in manhood 
produce so much more serious consequences, — that 
extravagance and idleness are then absolute ruin to 
many others beside themselves, — that the indulgence 
of violent and cruel passions then may absolutely lead 
to murder, — and that falsehood, or theft, would at once 
cause them to be driven out of society, — comparing, 
I say, these serious worldly consequences of the faults 
of mankind, with the very light worldly consequences 
of the faults of boyhood, and not considering, in either 



SERMON VII. 61 

case, that the real evil of every fault is its offence in 
the sight of God, its making us more unlike his image, 
and more like the image of the devil, and, therefore, 
more unfit for the company of God, and more fit for 
the company of devils, — they are apt to laugh at what 
they call the mere tricks and idlenesses of their youth, 
and thus to encourage those young persons who hear 
them, to go on without scruple in the very same track 
of carelessness. 

But what is it, then, that Jesus Christ means when 
he tells us, that, " he who is unjust in the least, is 
unjust also in much," and " that if we have not been 
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit 
to our trust the true riches ?" He means, that when 
we talk of the consequences of our actions, we forget, 
that as in one point of view the consequences of the 
greatest crimes that the most powerful tyrant ever 
committed, are as the least thing in the sight of God, 
so, in another, the consequences of the common school 
, faults of the youngest boy are infinitely great. The 
desolation of mighty kingdoms, the ruin of thousands 
of families, blood, and fire, and murder, and famine, 
and pestilence, which follow so often in the train of 
war, — these are evils which seem to us so monstrous, 
that the man, who for his own selfish pride and am- 
bition, brings them upon mankind, appears, indeed, 
deserving of God's heaviest judgments : — for we make 
God to see with our eyes, and to view that as impor- 
tant in itself which is important to us. But what if 
we merely look up to the sky on any starlight night, 
and fix our eyes upon some one of the smallest stars, 
that are there shining in their brightness ? That little 



62 SERMON VII, 

star, that little bright point in infinite space, is, prob- 
ably, a sun as large and as powerful as ours, and 
gives light and heat, not to one, but to several worlds 
like this in which we live, each of them filled, it may 
be, with reasonable beings, with hopes and fears, and 
pains and pleasures, as important to them as ours to us. 
Now if this star, this little star in our eyes, but, in truth, 
this sun of more than one world like ours, — if this star, 
with all its worlds, were to perish in an instant, how 
infinitely small should we regard the loss of it ! What 
a less than an atom, in our estimate, would be the hap- 
piness or the misery of all the beings who would thus 
be destroyed in an instant ! So, too, to all the beings 
of other worlds may the happiness and misery of 
mankind, and all the evils which the worst tyranny 
ever inflicted, seem as infinitely trifling ; far, far more 
so, than we can regard the slightest fault, or the light- 
est suffering of the youngest boy. But God judges 
differently : that is to him important, and that he wills 
his creatures to regard as important, which is an of- 
fence against his laws, a departure from his likeness. 
And of this, even of sin, he has willed the consequences 
to be infinite ; not confined to the happiness or misery 
of a few years, but of all eternity. So then, if you 
displease God, which you know you do by every fault, 
the evil of your conduct is infinite, and its conse- 
quences are infinite ; not doing injury here, but doing 
injury far greater — injury to your immortal souls, 
ruin to your immortal happiness. " He that is 
unjust in the least, is unjust also in much." Here is 
the reason given, why the faults of your boyhood are 
so serious, because they show a temper that does not 



SERMON VII. 63 

love God, and a heart unrenewed by his Holy Spirit ; 
— a temper and a heart, which, as they follow in boy- 
hood and youth the faults of youth, so in manhood, 
will they follow the faults of manhood, not, perhaps, 
those which men regard as infamous, but the faults 
which God no less abhors ; and having thus, in their 
state of trial, fitted themselves, not for more perfect 
good, but for greater ripeness in evil, their portion will 
be evil throughout eternity. 



SERMON VIII. 



MATT. XVIII. 6. 

Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which helieve 
in me, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in 
the depth of the sea. 

You see, by the strong language which our Lord here 
uses, that the sin which he is threa-ening in these 
words is a very great one ; — and he goes on to repeat 
the threat in the verse following : — " Woe unto the 
world because of offences ; for it must needs be that 
offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the 
offence cometh.'' Some of you, I trust, will know 
already what the words mean, and will see directly 
what I am going to turn them to ; — for it is a passage 
which I have often dwelt upon, as it is one which, 
while it is generally useful to all persons, strikes 
especially at one of the greatest sins of schools. But 
there are many, I dare say, who do not know what it 
means ; and who have never thought, when they heard 
this solemn threat read in the church, that they were 



SERMON VIII. 65 

themselves some of the very persons concerned in it ; 
that they were daily "offending," in the Scripture 
meaning of the word, some of Christ's little ones. I 
could not indeed have chosen a text which came home 
more directly to your daily practice, than the one 
which I have just read : I could not have noticed 
any sin with which your consciences will tell you, 
the moment that our Lord's words are explained to 
you, that you are more familiar. I proceed, there- 
fore, to explain them ; and will then apply them, in 
one or two common instances, to your life and daily 
habits. When our Lord speaks of offending one of 
these little ones who believe in him, I should first say 
that the word ^^ offend," in common speech, has a 
very different meaning from that in which the trans- 
lators of the Bible have here used it. You know that 
our translation was made more than two hundred 
years ago ; so that it is not wonderful that some words 
in the course of that time have changed their mean- 
ings. " Offend," in the text, and in many other places 
in the New Testament, means " to tempt or lead an- 
other into sins:" so that by "offending one of these 
little ones," our Lord does not mean " vexing them," 
"making them angry," or "ill-using them:" but 
" tempting or leading them into evil," or " throwing any 
hindrances in the way of their doing what they ought 
to do." It is this whioh he calls so wicked, that it were 
better for us to die this moment than be guilty of it. 
But now, by " little ones," whom are we to under- 
stand ? Jesus had just before taken a little child, and 
set him in the midst, and told his disciples, that unless 
they were converted and became as little children, 
3* 



66 SERMON VIII. 

they could not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
And then he says, that " they must not mislead or 
tempt to evil one of these little ones who believe in 
him." Now, a very little child cannot believe in 
Christ, because he cannot understand much about him. 
And we know also, that it must be a sin to tempt any 
one to evil, whether they be really little children in 
age or no. But the more like children they are, — - 
that is, the more ignorant, and simple-minded, and 
ready to believe and to do what others tell them, — so 
much the more wicked it is to tell them wrong, or to 
hinder them from going right. It applies then to any 
one who is young in character, even though he should 
happen to be old in years ; but it applies particularly 
to those who are at once young in years and young 
in character. It applies, therefore, particularly to 
those boys who are desirous of doing their duty, who 
have no great confidence in themselves, but are ready 
to be guided by others ; who are shy and timid, 
and unable to stand against laughter or ill usage. — 
There are such in every school ; and it is the worst 
reproach of schools, and the most awful responsibility 
for all who are connected with them, to think, that so 
many of them are utterly lost in consequence of the 
temptations which they here meet with : they are 
'^offended," in the Scripture sense of the word ; that 
is, they are laughed or frightened out of their Sa- 
viour's service, and taught very often ere long, not 
only to deny their Lord themselves, but to join in 
" offending" others who are now as innocent as they 
once were, and to draw them over to the worship and 
service of Satan, to which their own souls are already 
abandoned. 



SERMON VIII. 67 

Now, then, you see what the text means, and you 
feel how it applies to you. You know that there are 
amongst you many boys who remember and wish to 
keep the lessons that they have received at home ; 
and you know also, how much it is the fashion of 
schools to teach just the contrary. And I will take 
two instances which will have come, I fear, often 
enough within the experience of you all. I mean the 
case of idleness, and the case of extravagance. 

First, for Idleness. There are boys who have either 
never learnt, or have quite forgotten, all that may 
have been told them at home, of the duty of attending 
to their school-lessons. We know that there are boys 
who think all their lessons merely tiresome, and who 
are resolved never to take any more trouble about 
them, than what they cannot possibly avoid. But be- 
ing thus idle themselves, they cannot bear that others 
should be more attentive. We all know the terms of 
reproach and ridicule which are thrown out against a 
boy who works in earnest and upon principle. He 
is laughed at for taking unnecessary trouble, for be- 
ing afraid of punishment, or for wishing to gain favour 
with his masters, and be thought by them to be better 
than other boys. Either of these reproaches is one 
which a boy finds it very hard to bear ; he does not 
like to be thought afraid, or plodding, or as wishing 
to court favour. He has not age or sense, or firmness 
enough to know and to answer, that the only fear of 
which he need be ashamed is the fear of his equals, 
the fear of those who are in no respect better than 
himself, and have, therefore, no sort of right to direct 
him. To be afraid, then, of other boys is, in a boy, 
ti^ same sort of weakness as it is in a man to be 



68 SERMON vm. 

afraid of other men : and as a man ought to be equally 
ashamed of fearing men and of not fearing God, so 
a boy ought to be ashamed of fearing boys, and also 
to be ashamed of not fearing his parents and instruct- 
ors. And as, in after life, the fear of God makes no 
man do any thing mean or dishonourable, but the fear 
of men does lead to all sorts of weakness and baseness ; 
so amongst boys, the fear of their parents and teach- 
ers will only make them manly, and noble, and high 
spirited ; but the fear of their companions leads them 
to every thing low, and childish, and contemptible. 
Those boys, then, who try to make others idle, and 
laugh at them for trying to please their masters, are 
exactly like the men who laugh at their neighbours 
for being religious, and for living in the fear of God ; 
and both are like the more hardened ruffians in a 
gang of thieves or other criminals, whose amusement 
it is to laugh at the fear of justice, which beginners in 
crime have not yet quite got over. In all these in- 
stances there is not only the guilt of our own sin, but 
the far worse guilt of encouraging sin in others ; and, 
as I showed you last Sunday how your school faults, 
although very trifling in their worldly consequences, 
were yet as serious in the sight of God as the faults 
of grown men, because they showed that you were 
not serving or loving him, but serving and loving evil ; 
so it may be said, without the least going beyond the 
truth, that a boy who, being idle himself, tries to 
make others idle also, is exactly "offending one of 
those little ones who believe in Christ," and is in the 
daily habit of that sin which Christ says it were bet- 
ter for him to die directly than to be guilty of. 

Again, with regard to extravagance, and the breach 



SERMON VIII, 69 

of school regulations. There are some boys who, 
remembering the wishes of their parents, are extreme- 
ly unwilling to incur debts, and to spend a great deal 
of money upon their own eating, and drinking, and 
amusements. There are some too, who, knowing that 
the use of wine, or any liquor of that sort, is forbid- 
den, because the use of it among boys is sure to be 
the abuse of it, would not wish to indulge in any thing 
of the kind themselves. But they are assailed by 
the example, and the reproaches, and the laughter of 
others. It is mean, and poor spirited, and ungener- 
ous, not to contribute to the pleasures and social en- 
joyments of their companions ; in short, not to do as 
others do. The charge of stinginess, of not spending 
his money liberally, is one which a boy is particular- 
ly sore at hearing. He forgets that in his case such 
a charge is the greatest possible folly. Where is the 
generosity of spending money which is not your own, 
and which, as soon as it is spent, is to be supplied 
again with no sacrifice on your part ? Where is 
the stinginess of not choosing to beg money ] of your 
dearest friends, in order to employ it in a manner 
which those friends would disapprove of? — for, after 
all, the money must come from them, as you have it 
not, nor can you earn it for yourselves. But there is 
another laugh behind : a boy is laughed at for being 
kept so strictly at home that he cannot get money as 
he likes ; and he is taught to feel ashamed and angry 
at the hard restraint which is laid upon him. Truly 
that boy has gone a good way in the devil's service, 
who will dare to set another against his father and his 
mother, who will teach him that their care and au- 



70 SERMON VIII. 

thority are things which he should be ashamed of. Of 
those who can do this, well may Christ say, that " it 
were better for them that a millstone were tied about 
their neck, and that they were drowned in the depth 
of the sea." Yet these things are done ; and the con- 
sciences of many who now hear me will say to the 
eye of Him who can look into the inmost heart, that 
they are the doers of them. 

For you who are assailed by these and other such 
temptations, — for you, whom Christ calls his children, 
and whom the devil and his servants would fain make 
ashamed of your Father and your Lord, — for you, who 
are laughed at because you will not be idle, or 
drunken, or extravagant, or undutiful, or in some 
way or other base and low principled,- — beware lest 
you suffer yourself to be " offended," that is, lest you 
are laughed and frightened out of your eternal salva- 
tion. After all, they that are with you are more and 
greater than they who are against you, — all the wise 
and good and noble among yourselves ; all good and 
wise and honourable men ; all blessed spirits that love 
the service of God, and delight to aid those who are 
fighting in his cause ; and, above all, that Holy and 
Eternal Spirit himself, your Comforter and mighty 
Deliverer, whose aid and perpetual presence with you 
was purchased by your Redeemer's blood. Trust in 
these, and be not afraid of all that hell and its ser- 
vants can do to you : "• Fear not them who can kill 
the body, and after that have no more that they can 
do ; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both 
soul and body in hell." 



SERMON IX. 



ROMANS I. 16. 

I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, 

I SPOKE last Sunday of the wickedness, the very great 
wickedness, of tempting others to do wrong, or laugh- 
ing at them and abusing them for doing right. And 
I said a few words, in conclusion, to those who are 
suffering under this trial, encouraging them to go on 
without fear, knowing that He who was for them was 
mightier than they who were against them. But in 
schools, as in the world at large, the very good and 
the very bad are both but few ; it is those who are a 
mixture of good and bad who make up the great ma- 
jority. There are, I hope and believe, very few, if 
any, among you, who wilfully follow after what is 
evil ; who, in the words of the Psalm, hate to be re- 
formed, and who cast God's words behind them. It 
is unnatural that, at your age, you should be so con- 
firmed in evil as this. On the other hand, they too, 
I fear, cannot be many, although I hope and believe 
there are some, who may fairly be said to be amongst 



72 SERMON IX. 

the honest and good hearts, which, having heard the 
word, keep it, and bring forth fruit, " some an hun- 
dred-fold, some sixty, and some fifty." This also, I 
fear, is unnatural : for ripened _ goodness in unripe 
age can be scarcely more looked for than ripened 
wickedness. The great majority of you will certain- 
ly be between these two points ; wishing to be good 
when they think seriously about it, and honouring it 
when they hear of it at a distance, and being actually 
good in some things themselves ; but, very generally, 
not thinking seriously about it, not honouring it, but 
often laughing at it, when it comes before them in the 
conduct of their companions in common life ; and, in 
many points, being very far from good in their own 
practice. It is to these, then, quite as much as to the 
few who are already serving God more entirely, that 
what I am going to say will be addressed ; it is these 
whom I am going to urge " not to be ashamed of the 
Gospel of Christ." You will be, perhaps, inclined to 
say, that you are not ashamed of it, and should think 
very ill of any one who were to say that he was so. 
And you may, possibly, have heard the words ex- 
plained of those people in the old times, who were 
afraid to call themselves Christians, because they 
would be rejected by their families and friends, and, 
perhaps, be exposed to imprisonment or death, if they 
had confessed the name of Jesus. Certainly, such 
times are happily over, and no one runs any risk of 
being cast off by his friends, or punished by the law, 
for calling himself a Christian. But I am not sure 
that he would not run some risk, not of being pun- 
ished by the law, but of being looked at very strangely, 



SERMON IX. 73 

at leastj by many of his friends and acquaintance, for 
always acting like a Christian. And this applies 
very much to you here. You know that what is 
called false shame is wonderfully strong in keeping 
you from acting as you ought to do in many respects ; 
and I will give some common instances of it, — some 
in what are called particularly religious duties, and 
others in matters which are, in fact, no less matters 
of religion, though they are not called so. 

To begin with the first sort. I am very far from 
saying that the practice of prayer, or of reading the 
Bible, or of coming to the communion, is, in itself, 
generally delightful to you. If you were really fond 
of these things, you would be a good deal further ad- 
vanced in the love of Christ than we may dare to 
expect. But although not generally delightful, yet I 
believe that they would be practised oftener than they 
are, if it were not for a false shame of what may be 
said or thought by others. It would seem very strange 
to be seen reading the Bible ; and it would be thought 
unusual, or, at least, you would be afraid lest it 
should be thought so, if any boy, not in the higher 
part of the school, were to go to the communion. The 
false shame, in the latter case, takes a very artful 
form ; it is not only a fear of being thought over- reli- 
gious, but a fear of being thought to receive the sacra- 
ment in order to please man rather than God : in 
other words, you sometimes are afraid to come to the 
Lord's table, lest you should be thought to be only 
trying to make us think well of you, not to obey the 
command of Christ. Now, certainly, it gives me 
pleasure to see a number of you attending the com- 



74 SERMON IX. 

munion ; and it does so for this reason, because I do 
not believe that there is one amongst you so wicked 
and so foolish as to think of going to that holy table 
only to deceive his master, and make him think him 
religious. Boys may, and I fear do, try to deceive 
us in some things. I can fancy some of you wishing 
to make me think you diligent, when you were really 
idle ; to make me think you quiet and orderly, when 
you were forward in mischief: but I cannot fancy 
any one of you wishing to make me think you reli- 
gious, when you were most grossly profane, and 
daring to come to the holy communion, solely for the 
purpose of making me believe a lie. This would be 
a monstrous and unnatural hypocrisy, and one which 
I am sure it is not in the nature of boys to be guilty 
of. And, therefore, I am glad when I see many of 
you at the sacrament, because I believe that you are 
come there in earnest. But my pleasure arises from 
this ; — ^not that I believe those who come are actually 
better in their general conduct than many of those 
who do not come ; but because it gives them a chance 
of becoming so. The communion is like a medicine 
for the soul ; and if we see people willing to take 
their medicine, we are pleased, not because there is 
any merit in their taking it, but because we think, 
that, whereas without it they could not have recovered, 
now, at least, it is possible that they may. If I see a 
boy at the communion, it is an earnest that he has 
had some serious thoughts, that he has made some 
good resolutions, and has put up, or will do so before 
he leaves the chapel, some sincere and earnest 
prayers. The effect of all this may, it is true, be 



SERMON IX. 75 

very short-lived ; it may never bring forth any fruit 
that man may notice ; I may never have reason to 
think that the boy is really the better for having 
attended the communion : still I am glad to see him 
there, because I feel that, at that time at least, he is 
resolving and praying to be better. And this I be- 
lieve, and will believe, of every individual whom I 
see there ; and you yourselves, I think, would agree 
with me, and would not suspect any one of your num- 
ber of going to that holy table from any other reason, 
than because he was, at that time at least, wishing to 
become better, and desirous of taking the means that 
Christ has recommended to make him better. 

But, after all, I will go further ; for it is a thing 
which it concerns you to hear, and I will not shrink 
from speaking it. At your age, the good opinion and 
approbation of your masters is a thing which you 
ought not to be ashamed to desire. As a lower mo- 
tive, and as one that may help you gradually to 
ascend to a higher one, I say you ought not to be 
ashamed of it ; but rather to be ashamed of not feel- 
ing it. What folly is it to tax such a motive as this 
with meanness ! It might, possibly, be meanness, if 
you could gain any actual profit by it ; if, because 
we thought well of a boy, he had more holidays, or 
less work, or more indulgences of some kind or an- 
other than his companions ; or if he would not be 
punished, if, relying on our good opinion, he were to 
be guilty of any offence. Our good opinion of a boy, 
in point of moral character, would do him no other 
good, than the mere pleasure of feeling that he pos- 
sessed it^ and certainly there are few pleasures 



76 SERMON IX. 

purer in their nature than this. Or, if we expressed 
our good opinion of him to his parents, it would, no 
doubt, give them great pleasure, and he would have 
the greater delight of knowing that they approved and 
respected him ; but, beyond this, I doubt whether it 
would procure him the same actual rewards, or addi- 
tional indulgences, as if he had carried home with 
him a prize for successful diligence and ability in 
school business. I say, then, that there is nothing to 
be got from our good opinion, in that gross sense in 
which low minds, who can understand nothing gen- 
erous or noble, are accustomed to think of getting. 
But there is to be got from it a pure and truly desira- 
ble pleasure — ^the good opinion and respect of those, 
who, from age and situation, are capable of forming 
an opinion, and whom it is your duty to try to satisfy, 
as they are, by God's appointment, under your pa- 
rents, your teachers and judges, and those who have 
to watch for your souls as men who shall give ac- 
count to Him who is at once their Master and yours. 
I now proceed to the remaining part of my subject, 
and am to give instances, in matters not commonly 
called religious, of that shame so often felt by young 
persons at following the Gospel of Christ, and feeling 
as Christ would have them feel. And it happens that 
here we have the example of our Lord himself record- 
ed for our benefit. Very little has, as we know, been 
mentioned of our Lord's early life, and nothing at all 
is told merely to satisfy our curiosity. Yet in the 
short story from which the words of the text are taken, 
we find a lesson given as to the very main points of 
our duty when young; as, in the fuller record of his 



SERMON IX. 77 

older life, we find our guide and example for those 
points on which we most need instruction in manhood. 
And it is worth while to notice what those points are ; 
they are, first, an earnest desire to improve himself, 
that so he might be fit for his Father's service, when 
he should be arrived at riper years ; and, secondly, a 
dutiful obedience to his parents, while he was as yet 
under age. Further, to show that this is an example 
exactly suited to your case who now hear me, I may 
just remind you that our Lord was at this time twelve 
years old, a period neither too late nor too early to fit 
it exactly for your imitation. I have already spoken 
of the false shame which often hinders you from per- 
forming what are peculiarly called your religious 
duties. But, strange to say,* you sometimes learn to 
feel ashamed of indulging your natural affections, and 
particularly of being attached to your mothers and 
sisters, and fond of their society. You fancy it is un- 
manly to be thought to be influenced by them, and 
you are afraid of being supposed to long too much for 
their tenderness and indulgent kindness towards you. 
Thus you affect a bluntness and hardness which, at 
first, you cannot put on without an effort; but the 
effort is made, and that from a false shame of being 
laughed at for seeming too fond of home. The effort 
is made, and it is continued, — till, sometimes I fear, it 
ceases to be an effort, and the coldness, which was at 
first merely put on, becomes at last a natural temper. 
I am afraid it cannot be doubted that it is peculiarly 
the effect of the public schools of England, to lower 
and to weaken the connexion between parent and 
child, to lessen mutual confidence, and to make a son 



78 SERMON IX* 

regard his father with more of respect than love* 
Certainly, at least, the relation in other countries of 
Europe is on a different footing : there is more of cor» 
dial intimacy, more of real familiar friendship between 
parents and children, than generally exist among us. 
And the cause of this difference belongs greatly, I 
think, to the feelings and habits acquired at school. 
In the first place, you are absent from home so large 
a portion of the year, that other persons and other 
objects engross, of necessity, a large share of your 
thoughts and feelings. The absence, certainly, you 
cannot help : but you may help increasing its natural 
effect by your own conduct. You become ashamed 
of speaking of your homes and relations in the natural 
language of a good heart ; you talk of them to one 
another as affording you such and such enjoyments; 
and you are ashamed if it appears that other boys have 
greater liberty, and are more indulged at home than 
yourselves. And this extends to school also: you do 
not like to have less money than other boys, — to have 
fewer presents sent you, — ^to find your friends more 
unwilling to pay your debts, than the friends of other 
boys are to pay theirs. This not only interferes with 
your pleasures, but hurts your pride ; and I believe 
that the annoyance to your pride is very often what 
you mind the most. Thus talking, and thus feeling 
towards home, the effect of long absence is increased 
tenfold; concealment and restraint are sometimes the 
dispositions with which you meet your fathers; you 
do not like to tell them all that you have done; and 
you think yourselves hardly used if your requests 
have not been all complied with. In this undutiful 



SERMON IX. 79 

and unchildlike temper, the period which you spend 
at home is too short to soften you. You return again 
to school, and the mischief rapidly increases : and it 
too often happens, that when you go from school to 
college, the evil becomes yet worse; extravagance 
there is practised on a larger scale, and is often ac- 
companied with other vices, which make confidence 
towards a parent still more difficult. Then comes 
actual life, — and you go to other parts of the world, 
or settle at a distance from your father's house: the 
opportunities of undoing the bad and cold impressions 
of early life are no more attainable ; and all that passes 
between father and son is a few letters, and a few 
short visits, till the son is called on to perform his 
last act of duty, in following his father's body to the 
grave. 

Far, very far, am I from saying or thinking that 
this is always, or even generally, the case to the full 
extent; but it is the tendency of schools to produce 
such a state of things ; it is the tendency of that false 
shame, that hateful and contemptible pride, which seals 
your lips against the expressions of duty and affection, 
which makes you affect to be undutiful before you are 
so in reality. Yet so catching is this shame, that I 
am afraid even those boys among you, who have the 
happiness of being at once both at school and at home, 
are tempted to throw away their advantages. The 
situation of those boys I have always thought most 
fortunate ; — with all the opportunities of forming last- 
ing friendships with those of their own age which a 
public school so largely affords, and with the opportu- 
nity also of keeping up all their home affections, of 



80 SERMON IX. 

never losing that lively interest in all that is said and 
done under their father's roof, which an absence of 
several months cannot fail, in some measure, to chill. 
Your fault then is by so much the greater, if you make 
yourselves strangers to domestic feelings and affec- 
tions, through your own fault ; — if you think you have 
any dearer friendships, or any that can better become 
either youth or manhood, than those which God him- 
self has marked out for you in your own homes. Add 
others to them if you will, and it is your wisdom and 
your duty to do so; but beware how you let any less 
sacred connexion weaken the solemn and universal 
bond of domestic love. Remember, that when Christ 
took our nature upon him, and went through every 
stage of human life to show us our peculiar duties in 
each, one of the only two things recorded of him, be- 
fore he arrived at manhood, is his dutiful regard to 
his parents: "He went down to Nazareth, and was 
subject unto them." 

The other thing recorded of him, is, that it was his 
pleasure to gain such knowledge as would fit him for 
the discharge of his duty in active life hereafter. He 
was found by his parents in the temple, " sitting in the 
midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking 
them questions." It is strangely mistaking the mean- 
ing of this account, and utterly destroying its useful- 
ness, to call this, as some have done, " Christ's preach- 
ing in the temple," — as if, at twelve years old, and 
long before he had begun his ministry, he would have 
attempted to teach the authorized teachers of his coun- 
try. The drift of the story is wholly different : it does 
not represent him as doing what no one could imitate 



SERMON IX. 81 

without presumption and folly, but as doing and feel- 
ing what all those of his age ought to do, and feel also. 
He was anxious to gain improvement, and took pains 
of his own accord to gain it. How often do you neg- 
lect it when it is brought before you, and every wish 
of your friends urges you to acquire it ! Fie was in- 
terested in what he heard, and tried to get a thorough 
understanding of it ; he did not only sit and hear what 
was said, as if that were in itself of any use, but he 
wished to heed and to profit by it. He was found 
hearing the doctors in the temple, and asking them 
questions ; if any thing in what they said was too hard 
for him, if he could not fully comprehend it, he asked 
for more explanation ; he asked questions about it, 
because he wished to know it. You will say perhaps 
that this was about religious subjects, and that these 
are very different from common lessons. It is true it 
was about religious subjects, but it seems that it was 
with a view to his future calling in life : it was to gain 
that knowledge, which afterwards shone forth so admi- 
rably in his own discourses, when, like the wise house- 
holder of his own parable, he brought forth out of his 
treasury things new and old, — and made every object 
in nature, and every truth relating to human society 
and human character, serve the purposes of the king- 
dom of Grod. The point in the example is, that you 
should in youth gain the knowledge which may make 
you better and wiser men hereafter; which may en- 
able you to glorify God in your generation by a wise 
and understanding heart, and an able and eloquent 
tongue; which, amidst the infinitely varied relations 
of society in our days, where there is scarcely a sub- 
4 



82 SERMON IX. 

ject on which ignorance does not make us less useful, 
and knowledge more so, may enable you to ornament 
the common intercourse of life, and to direct with 
judgment its practical concerns, filling you with a 
lively perception and an ardent love of what is beau- 
tiful, of what is true, of what is good. After all, this 
must, in some degree, be a matter which you must 
at present be content to believe on the testimony of 
others. The object of education is to benefit your 
manhood ; and you must, therefore, arrive at manhood 
before this benefit can be fully tasted or comprehend- 
ed. Meantime, it is most certain, that your business 
here is in truth the business of your heavenly Father; 
that it is a duty, which he who wishes to do his Father's 
will must 'be anxious to perform zealously. '^Both 
hearing them and asking them questions:" — not only 
sitting to listen to, or rising up to repeat, words which 
are forgotten as soon as heard or said ; but anxious to 
remember and to understand what you say and what 
you hear, that the fruit of it may remain, and that 
you may be doing God's pleasure now, and may un- 
derstand in this, as well as in other matters, when the 
time for knowledge is come, that no one ever tried to 
do his pleasure without feeling that he had chosen the 
better part, and that to do the will of God was the best 
wisdom, both for earth and heaven. 



SERMON X. 



JOHN XVI. 12, 13. 

I have yet many things to say unto you, hut ye cannot 
hear them now, Howhdt when he, the Spirit of 
truth, is come, he rvill guide you into all truth. 

In these words our Lord describes two sorts of persons, 
— those who cannot yet bear the truth, and those who, 
through the guiding of the Spirit, are led into all truth. 
They who could not yet bear it were, we see, our 
Lord's own disciples ; — they who had followed him 
from the beginning of his ministry ; — they, of whom 
he had just before said, that they were all clean, ex- 
cept Judas who betrayed him. Still, he had much to 
say which they could not yet bear, but which they 
should be able to bear and to understand when the 
Spirit of truth should come, and lead them into all 
truth. These words were applicable to our Lord's 
first twelve disciples, and they are much more appli- 
cable to many of us. There are many in every age, 
— many I had almost said in every congregation, — 
who cannot bear all that Christ has to say unto them, 



B4 SERMON X. 

because they are not yet led by the Spirit, and neither 
their hearts nor their understandings can receive the 
perfect truth. 

If we want a more ancient example of this, the 
whole history of the Old Testament will furnish one. 
There, although in the successive revelations of suc- 
cessive ages much was told, still much also was for- 
borne : the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites 
was the reason why they were allowed some things, 
which in a riper state of knowledge men would shrink 
from ; why there was a veil over their faces, which 
hid from them the end of their own dispensation. 
But there are many who are in this respect Israelites 
among us ; there are many who are still living under 
the law, and who cannot yet understand or feel the 
voice of the Spirit. Christ has many things to say 
unto them, but they cannot bear them now. 

For this reason, and because I know that, from your 
age and many other circumstances, many of you are 
of this class, I have not spoken to you, in the sermons 
I have lately preached from this place, in the way 
that some perhaps might have expected : I have not 
dwelt so much upon your redemption by Jesus Christ, 
as upon your own particular faults and temptations ; 
I have used the language of the Law more than that 
of the Gospel. I have done this, because I thought.it 
not in itself the best and highest instruction, but be- 
cause I was afraid that you could not understand profit- 
ably any other. When I mention common things of 
your daily life, — common faults which you every day 
commit, common feelings which every day pass 
through your hearts and minds,— you attend, and care- 



SERMON X. 85 

fully take in what I am saying ; but, if I were to use 
the language of St. Paul's Epistles, and speak of your 
acquittal by faith in Christ only, of your having no 
confidence in your own works, but being created in 
Christ Jesus through the Spirit to do good works, your 
feelings would, I fear, be very little interested. You 
would think that was the common language of sermons, 
and would not so readily^bring it home to yourselves. 
And I will tell you why you would not. The whole 
of the Gospel message is one of comfort to those who 
feel themselves sinners, — to those whose consciences 
trouble them, and who fear the anger of God, and 
wish to flee from it. It is a medicine for the sick, 
which they who do not feel themselves sick, cannot be 
persuaded to care for. You remember what our Lord 
himself said of the different manner in which he was 
treated by the Pharisee who asked him to supper, and 
by the woman who came in while he sat at meat, and 
washed his feet with her tears. " There was a certain 
creditor,'' he said, " who had two debtors : the one 
owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And 
when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave 
them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will 
love him most ? Simon answered and said, I suppose 
that he to whom he forgave most. And he said unto 
him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to 
the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this wo- 
man 1 I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no 
water for my feet ; but she hath washed my feet with 
tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. 
Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman since the 
time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My 



86 SERMON X. 

head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman 
hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I 
say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; 
for she loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, the 
same loveth little." I have copied the whole of the 
story, for it is so striking a picture of our common state 
of mind towards Christ. We hear his words with re- 
spect, — the Pharisee evidently respected Christ, and 
wished to show his attention to him by asking him into 
his house : but, when the question is of loving him, of 
believing in him as our only Saviour, of fleeing to him 
as our peace with God, through whose merits our sins 
are washed away, truly we feel no disposition for this. 
Our sins give us no anxiety ; we care nothing for be- 
ing at peace with God, or at enmity : — we think noth- 
ing about our need of being forgiven, and therefore 
feel very little love to him who has forgiven us. It is 
vain therefore to talk to you of Christ, till you feel 
your want of him; it is idle to speak to you of the mercy 
of your redemption, till you have some sense of the 
danger from which you have been redeemed. If, by 
having your great and daily faults brought home to 
you, — if, by seeing how much your lives fall short, I 
do not say of the law of God, but even of the lives 
and hearts of good men, even amidst all the imperfec- 
tions of humanity, — if, by seeing how bad you are, 
you could learn to wish to be better, — then, indeed, 
you would be ripe for the doctrine of the cross of 
Christ ; then the same Spirit, who had done his first 
work in making you know and feel your sin, would be 
ready to begin his second, of showing you through 
whom you are forgiven. " The law is our school- 



SERMON X. 87 

master to bring us unto Christ ;" but Christ will never 
be sought by those who have never learned to fear 
the law* 

True it is, your faults may be pointed out to you, 
and yet you may not wish to turn from them : your 
evil practices and evil principles may be shown to 
you, and yet you may continue, on the very next 
temptation, to follow them as before. The fear of 
God may be preached to you ; but you will continue 
to be led by the fear of one another. There is noth- 
ing new in all this : for forty years the Israelites pro- 
voked God in the wilderness ; and of all that great 
multitude who had been delivered out of Egypt, who 
had heard the voice of God giving to them the law of 
life, and who had been fed with manna from heaven, 
only two continued steadfast unto the end, — only two 
entered into the land of promise. So it ever has been, 
and so it will be. If sin had no present sweetness or 
present advantage, who would ever be so brutishly fool- 
ish as to be guilty of it ? We must not wonder at 
this, nor be discouraged. We are taught that sin will 
ruin us at last, — not that it will be sure never to gain 
us any worldly good. The Psalmist said, long ago, 
that he was grieved because he saw the ungodly in 
such prosperity ; and the last of the prophets, Malachi, 
said, that many in his time thought it of no use to 
serve God, because they who tempted God were even 
delivered ; that is, they who sinned often found their 
profit in it. So also Christ, speaking of the latter times, 
such as those in which we are now living, says, " that 
because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will 
wax cold;" that is, because the wicked shall go 



88 SERMON X. 

through life unpunished, many will grow tired of the 
service of Christ, and think that the wages of sin will 
answer better. Nor will it be till this earth and all 
that are in it are burnt up, that their calculation can 
be proved to have been as foolish as it was wicked. 
Be not, therefore, surprised at this, nor discouraged, 
you, whoever and how many soever you may be, 
who can bear Christ's words, and are guided by 
Christ's Spirit, and love your Saviour, because he has 
saved your souls from sin and destruction. For you 
the events recorded in this week are not idle words : 
you have an interest in that most solemn story ; nor 
is it like a mere tale of other days, that Christ was 
betrayed, and crucified, and rose again the third day. 
In that death, andrin that resurrection, are contained 
to you, all that makes it truly an infinite blessing to 
have been born. For you was Christ mocked, and 
scourged, and crucified ; for you he suffered the fear 
of death, and the pains of death ; for you he rose 
again from the dead, the first fruits of them that slept, 
that he might open the kingdom of heaven to all that 
slept in his faith and fear. For you he ascended to 
the right hand of the Father ; and in your hearts he 
lives continually by his Holy Spirit, an earnest of 
your full and perfect rest. For you the partaking of 
the memorials of his body and blood is a solemn and 
a blessed privilege, reminding you at once of your 
sins and of your safety ; — how weak and lost in your- 
selves, how strong and how happy in the strength of 
Christ. What though you see others walking in far 
different courses, turning a deaf ear to all instruction, 
— making their belly their God, and glorying all the 



SERMON X. 89 

while in their shame, — remember that the way to de- 
struction is ever wide and easy, and many are they 
who follow it. But it is better, perhaps, to draw off 
your thoughts from them, lest, in thankfulness that 
you are not as they are, you should forget a Christian's 
humility and love. You have your own work to do, 
your own temptations to struggle with ; and that worst 
temptation besides — that if ever you fall into sin, there 
will be many to triumph in it, and to glory in the 
weakness of a true servant of Christ. But go on 
still in the strength of Christ's Spirit ; and though you 
fall, yet shall you arise and conquer at the end. And 
for you who are yet in suspense, not yet able to bear 
all Christ's words, but still aroused and inclined to 
listen to him, — may the seed once sown, be mercifully 
preserved and fostered ; may you go on, till you under- 
stand the way of God more perfectly : may it be said 
of you, not only '' that you are not far from the king- 
dom of God," but that you have, in sincerity, en- 
tered into it, and have made its holiness and its happi- 
ness your own. 



SERMON XI. 



[PREACHED ON TRINITY SUNDAY.] 
1 TIMOTHY III. 16. 

Great is the mystery of godliness. 

Few words in the New Testament have ever been 
more strangely misinterpreted than these ; few could 
be found which have been equally perverted, inas- 
much as they have been used to inculcate notions, 
the very opposite to their real meaning. They have 
been continually quoted, as speaking of the darkness 
and difficulty of some points in Christianity ; whereas 
their real purpose is to commend the great and glori- 
ous nature of those truths which it has made known. 
They are understood to say, that the secrets of Chris- 
tianity are wonderful, and above the understanding of 
men to fathom ; whereas their real meaning is, that 
it is the revelations of Christianity which are so won- 
derful, that what had been hid from all the wise and 
prudent of the world, and v/hat the world, by wisdom, 
never could have attained to, was, by the Gospel, re- 
vealed unto babes, and made so familiar, that all 
could kiTow, and all mijrht love it. 



SERMON XI. 91 

Above all, it is with reference to the great truth 
which the Church this day commemorates, that the 
supposed meaning of the text has been as mischievous 
as its true meaning would be beneficial. Its supposed 
meaning has been mischievous, because, by teaching 
people to regard the Trinity as an incomprehensible 
mystery, it has naturally made them regard it as a 
subject rather awful and wonderful, than full of the 
deepest practical benefit. Its true meaning would be 
beneficial, as it calls upon us to thank God for his 
goodness, in having manifested himself to us more 
than he had ever done before to Jew or Gentile ; in 
having made all his goodness pass before us ; in 
having taught us to love him as our Redeemer, and 
having vouchsafed to abide with his Church for ever, 
as our Comforter and Sanctifier. 

" Great," indeed, " is the mystery of godliness !" 
great, and for ever blessed, is that secret concealed 
from the foundation of the world, and revealed by the 
Spirit of Christ to Christ's true disciples ; the secret 
of Him who " Was manifest in the flesh, justified in 
the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 
believed on in the world, received up into glory." 
Such are the words which follow directly those that 
I have taken for my text 3 and how much is there to 
be found in them ! 

It is well known that about one word in this pas- 
sage there is a great uncertainty ; that whereas our 
translation runs, " Great is the mystery of godliness ; 
God was manifest in the flesh," &;c. ; there is very 
high authority, and many very strong reasons, for 
reading, " Great is the mystery of godliness, who was 



92 SERMON XI. 

manifest in the flesh," &c. ; that is to say, ^' Great 
are the truths concerning that wonderful Person, 
whom the Gospel has revealed to us ; for he was 
manifest in the flesh," &c. He calls Christ the 
" Mystery of Godliness," or, " the great Secret re- 
vealed by the Gospel ;" inasmuch as he is the Author 
and Finisher of our Faith, and the one great subject 
of the Gospel revelation. I mention this, because, 
in preaching on a text of which any of the words are 
doubtful, it is right to state plainly that there is a 
doubt about them. But as our common reading, if 
not the true one in word, is a very exact and forcible 
expression of it in spirit, so I shall follow it on the 
present occasion, without pretending to enter upon 
any critical questions, for which this is neither the 
time nor the place. 

The substance, then, of the Gospel revelation is, 
that God was manifest in the flesh, and justified in 
the Spirit ; that he was seen of angels, and preached 
to the Gentiles ; that he was believed on in the world, 
and received up into glory. Now let us attend to 
each of these points in order. 

The first words are similar to those of St. Peter, 
where he says, that Christ " was put to death in the 
flesh, but quickened by the Spirit;" or, to those again 
of St. Paul himself, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
where he says, that Christ was " made of the seed of 
David according to the flesh ; but declared to be the 
Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of ho- 
liness, by the resurrection from the dead." In all 
these places, and in more which might be quoted, 
there is a distinction drawn between the flesh and the 



SERMON XI. 93 

Spirit ; between the human nature of Christ and his 
divine nature ; between the Son of Man and the Son 
of God. Because we were sinners, he became man, 
and died ; but because he was God, he was not only 
himself freed from death, but we also, through faith 
in him, shall be raised to life also. We were recon- 
ciled to God, by the death of his Son ; and being 
reconciled, are saved by his life, because he^ broke 
the bands of death, and liveth for evermore, through 
the Divine Spirit which was in him. 

Next it says, " He was seen of angels, and preached 
to the Gentiles." By the word " angels," or " mes- 
sengers," is meant, not only those spiritual beings 
whom we commonly call by that name, but their 
earthly fellow-servants also, the prophets and apos- 
tles, who have been permitted to share with them in 
the great work of giving glory to God, and doing good 
to men. By these, says the Apostle, " God in Christ 
was seen." God the Father, as he is in himself, no 
man hath seen, or can see ; but " the only-begotten 
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath de- 
clared him." In him God has spoken to man face to 
face : with Abraham, on the plain of Mamre ; with 
Moses, on Mount Sinai ; again with Moses and Eli- 
jah, on Mount Tabor ; with his chosen apostles, for 
weeks and months together, on the shores of the Sea 
of Galilee ; with Paul, the last of the apostles, as with 
one born out of due time, he spoke, after his ascen- 
sion, from heaven. But these all saw and believed ; 
these, his earthly messengers, as well as those heav- 
enly ones who announced his birth to the shepherds, 
and his resurrection to his sorrowing disciples, these 



94 SERMON XT. 

all saw him with their eyes, and heard him, and 
talked with him. Of them he was seen; and by 
them, his witnesses, he was preached unto the Gen- 
tiles. They who sat in darkness, and who lived 
without him in the world, to them was his salvation 
made known, and his holy name declared. And, lest 
they might, after all, be disposed to envy the lot of 
his chosen messengers, who had seen him with their 
eyes, — while to them he was only preached, they but 
heard of him from the reports of others, — his own 
especial word has been recorded for their — I had 
better say for our — comfort ; for their case is ours. 
'^ Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have 
believed." 

Lastly, it says, '' that he was believed on in the world, 
and received up into glory." This comes naturally 
after the words that had just been used before. He 
was preached to the Gentiles, and they believed ; the 
kingdoms of the earth did him homage ; from the 
rising to the going down of the sun, all nations have 
heard of his name, and all the world is full of his 
glory. Not in one little country only, or amongst one 
single people ; but all the ends of the earth have 
heard the salvation of our God, and Egypt and Baby- 
lon are become united with Israel, — a blessing in 
the- midst of the land. This is the kingdom of Christ ; 
this is the fruit of his sufferings, and of the labours of 
his servants. But here it is no more " God manifest 
in the flesh," or seen with the outward eyes of his 
messengers. " He was received up into glory ;" — 
He went away that the Comforter might come unto 
his people in his stead ; — he ceased to be manifest in 



SERMON XI. 95 

the flesh, to be seen with the bodily eye, that his 
Spirit might be made manifest to our spirits, that he 
might be more than seen by those who willingly re- 
ceived him, and in whose hearts he found a temple, 
wherein he might continually abide. " He was re- 
ceived up into glory, and gave gifts unto men ;" the 
gift of his Holy Spirit, which, so long as he was 
manifest in the flesh, was not given. St. Paul him- 
self has taught us to associate the ascension of Christ 
with the descent of the Holy Spirit ; and, indeed, 
were we not so to associate it, it would rather be a 
subject of sorrow than of joy. The revelation of the 
Gospel ends then with its concluding and final truth, 
that the Son of God was taken up into glory, and that 
the Spirit of God was to abide with his people, till the 
Son shall again return from heaven, when all things 
are at last accomplished. He was manifested in the 
flesh to take away our sins, and was received up into 
glory when the kingdom of heaven was opened by 
his blood to all believers, and his Spirit henceforth 
was required to fit them for entrance into that king- 
dom, by forming them again after his image. 

This then is the mystery of godliness ;■— this is the 
great truth, unknown and undiscoverable by our un- 
aided reason, which the Gospel has now made known 
to us. For what we know of God the Father, although 
that too has mercifully been confirmed by his own 
word, yet, according to St. Paul, it was not undis- 
coverable by our own reason, but rather it is made a 
matter of blame that men did not make it out for 
themselves. The works of creation so clearly declare 
their author, that they who turned from the worship 



yo SERMON XI. 

of the one true God to make to themselves gods of 
things created, whether in heaven or in earth, are 
left, in the words of the Apostle, without excuse. 
The knowledge then of God the Father, — I mean 
such knowledge of him as we have ever gained, or 
can gain, — is not called a mystery ; because a mys- 
tery, in the language of the Apostles, means a truth 
revealed, which we could not have found out if it had 
not been told us. Yet, as experience has shown that 
men did not, in fact, make themselves acquainted with 
God the Father, so it has been mercifully ordered, 
that even what we could have discovered, if we would, 
has yet been expressly revealed to us ; and the Law 
and the Prophets are no less full and plain in pointing 
out our relations to God the Father, than the Gospel 
is in pointing out our relations to God the Son, and 
God the Holy Ghost. 

I would beg attention to these w^ords, "that the 
Scripture is full and clear in pointing out our rela- 
tions to God." For the revelations or mysteries of the 
Gospel, like those of the Law and the Prophets, never 
pretend to tell us any thing of the nature of God as 
he is in himself. This, indeed, is a mystery ; not in 
the sense in which that word is used in the Scrip- 
ture, but in the sense in which we commonly use it 
now : it is not a truth revealed, which could not other- 
wise have been known ; but a truth which has not and 
cannot be revealed, and which cannot be known at all. 
And mysteries of this sort, and in this sense, are in- 
deed incomprehensible ; but, then, they are no part of 
revelation, as it is in fact a flat contradiction to talk of 
revealinor or makinor visible what is not and cannot 



SERMON XI. 97 

be revealed. Such points as this are no matters of 
belief; for it is folly to talk of believing what we can- 
not understand. I do not mean that we cannot believe 
a thing unless we understand how it is effected; but 
that we cannot believe it unless we understand what it 
means; — as otherwise, it is evident, that we can only 
believe that something is something: we can no more 
believe it, than we could believe a proposition in an 
unknown language. But far, very far, are the truths 
revealed in the Scriptures, from being of such a char- 
acter as this. We cannot indeed understand how the 
divine and human natures were united in the person 
of Christ, nor how the Holy Spirit influences our 
minds; but we can full well understand, and know, 
and feel, what it is that is meant, when it is said, that 
He who was in the form of God, that is, whose being 
and nature were divine, "took upon him the form of a 
servant, and was made in the likeness of man; " — or, 
when it is said, that " God so loved the world that he 
gave his only-begotten Son, that all who believe in 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; " — 
or when, again, we are told that God "will give his 
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him,'^ — and that this 
Holy Spirit strives with our evil nature, is grieved by 
our wilful and ungrateful coldness, and is utterly 
blasphemed by our continued hardness and impeni- 
tence. We all can understand what this means: 
would to God that we all, in the Scripture sense of the 
word, helieved it : that is, that it had entered not only 
into our understandings, but into our very heart of 
hearts, a daily living fountain of peace, and hope, and 

joy- 



98 SERMON XI. 

True it is, that this Bread of Life does not nourish 
us all ; and instead of seeing that the fault is in our- 
selves, and that to our sickly bodies the most whole- 
some food will lose its virtue, we are apt to question 
the power and usefulness of the food itself. True it 
is, that if we were but good and holy, it would be an 
idle question to ask about our faith, when our lives 
sufficiently declared it. So, if a man were strong and 
healthy, it would be needless to inquire about the 
quality of his food. But not more foolish is it to sup- 
pose that a man can be strong and healthy without 
wholesome food, than to think that we can be good 
and holy without a Christian's faith. Even with that 
faith, how far are we from what we ought to be — 
even the best and holiest of us all ! Yet those who 
have tried it know, that without that faith they would 
be nothing at all ; and that, in whatever degree they 
have overcome the world or themselves, it is owing to 
their faith in the promises of God the Father, resting 
on the atonement of the blood of his Son, and given 
and strengthened by the abiding aid and comfort of 
the Holy Spirit. 



SERMON XII, 



GALATIANS III. 24. 

The Imo was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. 

In the sermon which I preached last Sunday from 
this place, I could not forbear from entering into some 
detail upon the great and peculiar truths of Christi- 
anity. The day seemed to call for such a choice of 
a subject, as it was set apart to commemorate, not one 
part only of the scheme of our redemption, like the 
feast of Christmas, or Easter, or Whitsuntide, but 
the whole of it together : all our relations to God, and 
all that God has done for us, are concentrated in a 
manner in the celebration of Trinity Sunday. Yet, 
even at the very time when I was thus dwelling on 
the great truths of the Gospel, I doubted whether my 
hearers were sufficiently advanced to receive them. I 
do not mean advanced in understanding, — for in that 
respect they are, indeed, easy, — but advanced in Chris- 
tian feelings and Christian practice. By what strange 
error could it have ever happened that the doctrines 



100 SERMON XII. 

of the Gospel have been regarded as little bearing upon 
our practice, but because the practice of so many, who 
call themselves Christians, has been unfit to receive 
them ? It is an awful, but a certain truth, that the 
very foundation of Christianity, that "Christ Jesus 
came into the world to save sinners," is heard con- 
tinually with no lively impression of the inestimable 
blessing conveyed in it. How should it rightly be 
valued, when we care so little about the evil of sin, 
and think there is nothing very alarming in the con- 
dition of a sinner ? Therefore the words of the Apostle 
are for ever useful, and apply to the successive stages 
of our individual growth, no less than to the successive 
periods in the existence of the world; "The law is 
our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ:" and it is 
vain to hope that we shall ever attain to the full faith 
and love of a Christian, without having first gone to 
school to the teaching of the law. 

For this reason it is, that on former occasions I have 
spoken less than some, perhaps, might expect, of the 
promises of the Gospel ; and have dwelt much more 
upon your own individual faults and duties. Assured- 
ly, if any one among you were filled with an entire 
hatred of sin, — if he were thoroughly anxious to be- 
come like God, and felt most deeply the infinite dis- 
tance between the most pure and most high God, 
and himself a sinner, — ^to such an one I would hasten 
to hold forth the Gospel promises, — ^to such an one I 
w^ould repeat all those comfortable words, of which the 
Scripture is so full — that there is no condemnation for 
those who believe in Christ, and that all who believe 
in him are justified from all things from which they 



SERMON XII. 101 

could not be justified by the law of Moses. I would 
say, that, through the aid of Christ's Spirit, they should 
be daily renewed after Christ's image, till their re- 
semblance to Grod should be the sure sign that they 
were, indeed, the children of God. This, I say, is the 
language which we should use to those who are real- 
ly anxious about their salvation ; who really are dis- 
satisfied with and distrust themselves, and love and 
entirely desire to please God. It was when the pub- 
lican said, in sincerity and earnestness of heart, " God 
be merciful to me a sinner," that he went down to his 
house justified rather than the Pharisee. It was, when 
Job confessed that he had endeavoured to justify him- 
self in vain, and that he now abhorred himself, and 
repented in dust and ashes, that the answer of God 
was given, that he had spoken the thing that was 
right, and that his latter end should be blessed more 
than his beginning. But I fear, that, to most of you, 
the best proof that the mercies of your redemption are 
not the fittest subject on which to address you, is con- 
tained in the fact that you are so little interested in 
hearing of them : " The law then must be your school- 
master to bring you unto Christ;" that is, we must 
try if, by any means, declaring to you the pure and 
perfect law of God, and contrasting it with your own 
principles and practice, we can succeed in making 
you feel your sin and your danger, and so, ready and 
eager to fly to Christ for deliverance. 

What the aspect of public schools is, when viewed 
with a Christian's eye, — and what are the feelings 
with which men, who do really turn to God in after 
life, look back upon their years passed at school, — I 



102 SERMOJN Xli. 

cannot express better than in the words of one* who 
had himself been at a public school, who did afterwards 
become a most exemplary Christian, and who, in what 
I am going to quote, seems to describe his own ex- 
perience: "Public schools," he says, *'are the very 
seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or 
it may not; but the fact is indisputable. None can 
pass through a large school without being pretty in- 
timately acquainted with vice ; and few, alas ! very 
few, without tasting too largely of that poisoned bowl. 
The hour of grace and repentance at length arrives, 
and they are astonished at their former fatuity. The 
young convert looks back with inexpressible regret 
to those hours which have been wasted in folly, or 
worse than folly : and the more lively his sense of 
the newly discovered mercies, the more piercing his 
anguish for past indulgences." Now, although too 
many of us may not be able to join in the last part of 
this description, yet we must all, I think, be able to 
bear witness to the truth of the first part. We may 
not all share in the after repentance, but we must 
know that our school life has given ample cause for 
repentance. "Public schools are the very seats and 
nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or it may 
not; but the fact is indisputable." These are the 
words of the sensible and excellent man whom I have 
just alluded to: and with what feelings ought we all 
to read them, and to listen to them. I am afraid the 
fact is, indeed, indisputable — "Public schools are the 

* The late Mr. John Bowdler.— See his " Remains," Vol. II. 
p. 153. Third Edition. 



SERMON XII. 103 

very seats and nurseries of vice/' But he goes on to 
say, "It may be unavoidable, or it may not;" and 
these words seem to me as though they ought to fill 
us with the deepest shame of all. For what a notion 
does it give, that we should have been so long and so 
constantly bad, that it may be doubted whether our 
badness be not unavoidable — whether we are not evil 
hopelessly and incurably. And this to be true of 
places which were intended to be seats of Christian 
education; and in all of which, I believe, the same 
words are used in the daily prayers which we use regu- 
larly here! God is thanked for those founders and 
benefactors, "by whose benefits the whole school is 
brought up to godliness and good learning !" Brought 
up to godliness and good learning in places that are 
the very seats and nurseries of vice ! But the doubt, 
whether our viciousness be or be not unavoidable, is 
something too horrible to be listened to. Surely we 
cannot regard ourselves as so utterly reprobate, as so 
thoroughly accursed of God. "The earth, which 
beareth briers and thorns, is rejected, and is nigh unto 
cursing, whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, 
we are persuaded better things of you, though we thus 
speak;" or else, indeed, our labour would be utterly 
vain. But then our hope that this viciousness is not 
unavoidable, depends upon you, whether or no you 
choose to make it so. Outward order, regularity, nay, 
even advancement in learning, may be, up to a cer- 
tain point, enforced; but no man can force another to 
be good, or hinder him from being evil. It must be 
your own choice and act, whether, indeed, you wish 
this place to be "unavoidably a seat and nursery of 



104 SERMON XII. 

vice," or whether you wish to verify the words of our 
daily thanksgiving, that, by the benefit of our founder, 
" you are here brought up to godliness and good learn- 
ing." 

But, it may be asked, what is meant when public 
schools are called "the seats and nurseries of vice?" 
It is not difficult to find out in what sense a Christian 
writer must have used the expression. That is pro- 
perly a nursery of vice, where a boy unlearns the 
pure and honest principles which he may have received 
at home, and gets, in their stead, others which are ut- 
terly low, and base, and michievous,- — where he loses 
his modesty, his respect for truth, and his affectionate- 
ness, and becomes coarse, and false, and unfeeling. 
That, too, is a nursery of vice, and most fearfully so, 
where vice is bold, and forward, and presuming ; and 
goodness is timid and shy, and existing as if by suffer- 
ance, — where the good, instead of setting the tone of 
society, and branding with disgrace those who disre- 
gard it, are themselves exposed to reproach for their 
goodness, and shrink before the open avowal of evil 
principles, which the bad are striving to make the law 
of the community. That is a nursery of vice, where 
the restraints laid upon evil are considered as so much 
taken from liberty, and where, generally speaking, ' 
evil is more willingly screened and concealed, than 
detiscted and punished. What society would be, if 
men regarded the laws of God and man as a griev- 
ance, and thought liberty consisted in following to the 
full their proud, and selfish, and low inclinations, — 
that schools to a great extent are : and, therefore, they 
may be well called, "the seats and nurseries of vice." 



SERMON XII. 105 

Now, then, to what is this owing ? Public schools 
are made up of the very same persons whom we have 
known, a few years earlier, to be pure-minded and 
obedient children, — whom we know, a few years later, 
to be at least decent and useful men. What especial 
cloud hangs over this one part of our life's current, 
that the stream here will ever run dark and sullen, 
while on its earlier and its later course it is either all 
bright and lively, or the impurity of its waters is lost 
to the distant view in the breadth and majesty of their 
volume ? I must touch upon the causes, or how shall 
we be able to point out the remedies ? 

Unquestionably, the time of life at which you are 
arrived, and more particularly the younger boys among 
you, is, in itself, exceedingly dangerous. It is just 
the time, beyond all others in life, when temptation is 
great, and the strength of character to resist it exceed- 
ingly small. Earlier, under your parents' roof, the 
taint of evil reached you with far less virulence, — 
you were surrounded with all influences of good. 
Later, you will be exposed, indeed, to enough of evil, 
but you will have gained at least more experience, 
and more strength of mind, to resist it. It is a great 
matter, too, that your bodies, at your time of life, so 
far outgrow your minds ; — that your spirits and bodily 
strength are so vigorous and active, while your under- 
standings are, in comparison, so feeble. This makes 
you unapt and unwilling to think ; and he who does 
not think, must surely do one of two things, — he must 
submit himself entirely to be guided by the advice and 
direction of others, like young children, or else he 
must certainly go wrong. Another cause is, that at 
5 



lOG SERMON xn. 

no place, or time of life, are people so much the slater 
of custom, as boys at school. If a thing has been an 
old practice, be it ever so mischievous, ever so un- 
worthy, it is continued without scruple ; if a thing is 
new, be it ever so useful, and ever so excellent, it is 
apt to be regarded as a grievance. The question 
which boys seem to ask is not, What ought we to be, 
and what may the school become, if we do our duty ? 
— ^but. What have we been used to, and is the school 
as good as it was formerly ? So looking backwards 
instead of looking forwardsj—oomparing ourselves 
with ourselves, instead of with the Word of God, — we 
are sure never to grow better, because we lose the 
wish to become better : and growth in goodness will 
never come, without our vigorous efforts to attain to 
it. This cause extends a great way, and produces 
more evil than we are apt to think of. Old habits, 
old practices, are handed down from generation to 
generation, and, above all, old feelings. Now it is 
certain, that education, like every thing else, was not 
brought to perfection when our great schools were first 
founded : the system had a great deal required to 
make it what it ought to be. I am afraid that Chris- 
tian principles were not enough brought forward, that 
lower motives were encouraged, and a lower standard 
altogether suffered to prevail. The system also was 
too much one of fear and outward obedience ; the 
obedience of the heart and the understanding were 
little thought of. And the consequence has been 
the same in every old school in England, — ^that boys 
have learnt to regard themselves and their masters as 
opposite to one another, as having two distinct inter- 



SERMON XII. 107 

ests ;— it being the master's object to lay on restric- 
tions, and abridge their liberty, while it was their 
business, by all sorts of means — combinations amongst 
themselves, concealment, trick, open falsehood, or open 
disobedience,-- to baffle his watchfulness, and escape 
his severity. It cannot be too strong to say, that this 
is at least so far the case, as far as regards the general 
business of schools : the boys' interest and pleasure are 
supposed to consist in contriving to have as little work as 
they can, the master's in putting on as much as he 
can ; — a strange and sad state of feeling, which must 
have arisen, I fear, from the habit of keeping out of 
sight the relation in which we both stand, masters and 
boys alike, to our common Master in heaven, and that 
it is his service which we all have, after our several sta- 
tions, to labour in. A due sense of our common ser- 
vice to our heavenly Master is inculcated by St. Paul 
as softening even the hardships of slavery, — although 
it is the peculiar curse of that wretched system, that 
the power is there exercised, not for the good of the 
governed, but for that of the governor. It is not for 
his own good, but for the interest merely of his mas- 
ter, that any man is a slave. But our relation to one 
another, like that of children and parents, is a relation 
chiefly for your good : it is for your benefit that the 
restraints of education are intended, — that you may 
be good, and wise, and happy, in after years, and may 
bring forth fruit from the seed here sown, which may 
endure unto life eternal. And this you would all at 
once acknowledge, if it were not for the old school 
feeling handed down from one generation to another, 
and growing out of a system too neglectful of Chris- 



108 SERMON XII. 

tian principles, or too fearful of openly professing 
them. This veil over the heart and understanding, 
this fatal prejudice, this evil error, like every thing 
else false, ignorant and wicked, can only be done away 
in Christ. When you shall turn to the Lord, the veil 
shall be taken away ; and you will be enabled to see 
clearly your true condition here, what we are endeav- 
ouring to make it, and how entirely our objects and 
interests are the same as your own. 



SERMON XIII, 



LUKE XIV. 24. 

None of those men which were hidden shall taste of 
my supper. 

It is perfectly true, that the first and immediate mean- 
ing of these words relates to the Jews as a nation. 
They declare, that the people who were first called 
into the kingdom of God, were to be cast out of it 
altogether, because they had refused to obey the call. 
It certainly does first relate to the Jews ; but this is 
not the meaning in which it concerns us now to attend 
to it. But as the threatenings and promises of the 
Old Testament are said by St. Paul to apply to Chris- 
tians, who were, by faith, become the children of Abra- 
ham, and partakers of the covenant for good and for 
evil ; so the warning parables of our Lord, in the 
New Testament, apply to us, and to our children after 
us : and it is the wisdom of every successive genera- 
tion to understand them as referring, not to the sins 
and follies of their fathers, but to their own. 

Therefore the parable of the " marriage supper'' 
should be understood as relating to ourselves. But 



110 SERMON XIII. 

even thus it is capable of being applied in more than 
one signification. You may often have heard sermons 
preached upon it, in which the marriage supper in the 
parable was understood of the sacrament of the 
Lord's supper : and the excuses made by the several 
persons in the story, for refusing to come when they 
were invited, have been compared with the various 
excuses so often made amongst us, for refusing to 
obey Christ's call to the holy communion. And this 
is a very sound and useful way of making the parable 
profitable to our own edification. I am going, how- 
ever, to take it now in rather a different sense ; not 
as relating particularly to the communion, but gener- 
ally as it expresses these following points, in the deal- 
. ings of God with them : — first, his calling them to 
their own true happiness, and giving them a season 
wherein the doors of his mercy stand freely open to 
them : — secondly, the obstinacy with which they neg- 
lect this call, and like anything else better: — and third- 
ly, the great punishment which they incur, being after a' 
time utterly shut out from happiness, and being placed 
in a far worse state than if the call had never been 
made to them at the beginning. 

Still, while taking thus the general principle of the 
parable, it would be unwise not to illustrate it by the 
peculiar circumstances of those who hear me. One 
congregation is not like another ; and it seems to me, 
that we should choose, as far as possible, such points 
to dwell upon, as our hearers may feel not only to 
concern themselves, but to concern themselves particu- 
larly. God's call to you, therefore, is not exactly the 
same as it is to others ; your reasons for not listening to 



SERMON XIII. Ill 

it are not exactly the same with the reasons of others ; 
and although the final punishment of disobedience be 
indeed the same to all, yet the more imm.ediate and earth- 
ly one is different, inasmuch as it varies according to 
the particular nature of that good thing which God 
offered, and which we declined to accept. 

God's call, addressed to the soul of every man, is 
a call to him to be happy for ever ; and this is the 
same thing as calling upon him to be holy, for holiness 
and happiness are one in God, and they are one also 
in the children of God. Holiness in God's creatures 
consists in their drawing near to God, and becoming 
like unto him. No man hath seen God, however, at 
any time ; — but the brightness of his glory, and the 
express image of his person, man has seen ; and al- 
though now we, in this generation, see him no longer 
with our bodily eyes, yet, with the story of his life and 
character handed down to us from those who did see 
and hear him, and with his Spirit ever dwelling amongst 
us, and revealing him to all those who desire him, we 
do, for all practical purposes, see and know him still. 
To be like Christ, then, is to be like God : he who has 
the image of the Son, the same has also the image of 
the Father. Now in Christ, the main point of imita- 
tion to us is this, that in all things he did the will of 
him who sent him, and laboured to finish his work. 
This he began from boyhood, and in this he persevered 
even till that moment when all was accomplished, and 
he resigned his spirit into the hands of his Father on 
the cross. To him, God's call was to be the great 
prophet of his people, to go about doing good, to teach 
them the knowledge of the Most High, to prepare 



112 SERMON XIII. 

men's minds for that kingdom of heaven, which by 
his blood was to be purchased, and preached to all 
mankind. This was to him, so far as he was man, 
God's special call ; — for his death, as a sacrifice for 
the sins of the whole world, belongs to his nature as 
he was both God and man : and here, therefore, there 
is no place for our imitation. As, then, Christ laboured 
all his life, beginning in his boyhood, to obey God's 
special call to him, so we can best imitate Christ by 
labouring all our lives to obey God's special call to 
us. Now this call is made known to us, not by a mira- 
cle, nor by a voice from heaven ; but partly by the 
circumstances of our age and outward condition, and 
partly by the different faculties and dispositions of our 
minds. For instance, your youth points out to you 
one especial call of God, to obey your parents and 
teachers, and to improve yourselves for the duties 
which you will hereafter have to perform as men. 
And your outward circumstances, your birth and con- 
dition in life, point out to you another especial call of 
God ; — that is, they point out to you what particular 
duties you will have hereafter to perform, and what 
sort of improvement is particularly required of you. 
Generally, to all young persons God's call is to im- 
prove themselves ; but what particular sort of improve- 
ment he calls you to, that you may learn from the 
station in life in which he has placed you. If you 
were born in a station, in which you would be called 
upon to work chiefly with your hands hereafter, then 
the strengthening of your bodies, the learning to be 
active and handy, to be bold and enduring of bodily 
pain and labour, would be your special duty, over 



SERMON XIII. 113 

and above that common duty of love to God and to 
man, which belongs to every age and every condition 
alike. But, as it is, you will be called upon to work 
chiefly with your minds hereafter : aud although it 
be very true, that the mind works but feebly when 
the body is sickly ; and that, therefore, you are called 
upon, like all other persons, to make yourselves, as 
far as you can, strong and active, and healthful and 
patient in your bodies ; yet your especial call is rather 
to improve your minds, because it is with your minds 
that God calls upon you to work hereafter. And for 
the younger part of you, I need not go any further 
than this ; for the particular calling in which you will 
have to work with your minds, — I mean the particu- 
lar profession or situation of life which you are to fill, 
— can hardly yet be fixed : and at any rate, you are 
yet too young to begin your professional course of 
studies, and your business is to attend to those studies 
which are pointed out for you, as likely to be useful 
generally to your understandings, be your profession 
hereafter what it may. 

But some of you are old enough to inquire what is 
God's call to you, as to the choice of a profession ; 
that is to say, what course of duty is pointed out to 
you by the particular dispositions and faculties of 
your minds. It is very true, that this choice does not 
always rest with yourselves : it is true, also, that you 
cannot yet fully judge of what your faculties may 
hereafter ripen to, nor how habit may make your in- 
clinations conform to what now you may feel most 
strongly to dislike. These are circumstances, which 
naturally point out to you the benefit of listening to 
5* 



114 SERMON XIII. 

the greater experience of others, and not deciding for 
yourselves alone. But, although you should not judge 
for yourselves absolutely, and in defiance of the ad- 
vice of others, yet it does become you, earnestly and 
carefully, to look into your own hearts and minds, to 
observe, so far as you can, what your character is, — 
what is its strength, and what its weakness ; — what 
are its intellectual faculties, and what its moral ten- 
dencies ; — w^hat faults it is most prone to, and what 
duties it seems best fitted successfully to perform. 
Few parents would refuse to listen to their son, when 
he laid before them the results of his own best inqui- 
ries into his own heart and mind, and accordingly 
represented his greater fitness for one particular call- 
ing, his greater unfitness for another. Nay, every 
wise parent would rejoice and be thankful to see his 
son thus opening his character before him, and 
furnishing him with the knowledge by which he could 
best judge of what was best for him. 

Undoubtedly, it is a solemn deliberation in what 
line of life God calls upon us to serve him ; and we 
know this, that it is beginning with most evil omens, 
if we enter upon any profession or way of living, to 
which we cannot humbly believe that he has called 
us. Family convenience, prospects of preferment, 
must not outweigh higher considerations ; and this 
applies especially to that most solemn of all callings, 
and in which, above all others, worldly well-doing in 
it may be quite independent of the fitness of our 
hearts and minds for the discharge of its duties. A 
young man of very low understanding is not likely to 
be called upon by liis friends, or tempted bv his own 



SERMON XIII. 115 

inclination, to enter upon the profession of the law : — 
a young man of a feeble body and a weak spirit, 
unapt, both in body and mind, to encounter toil and 
danger, will not often wish, or be wished by his friends, 
to go into the army or navy. But how many do we 
see every day, who are wished, and who consent 
readily, to enter into Christ's spiritual warfare, to be- 
come ministers of Christ's Gospel, while their minds 
are wholly disinclined to heavenly knowledge, and 
their hearts without any relish for heavenly love. 
This, assuredly, is an entering into the sheepfold by 
another way than by Christ, the door ; it is a taking 
charge of the sheep, with the selfish feelings of the 
hireling, not with the zeal and affection of the good 
Shepherd. 

But you are young yet, and you may hope, that 
before the time comes when you will actually enter 
on the ministry, you may have gained that desire to 
know and to do God's will, and to save the souls of 
others, which as yet you cannot pretend to feel. 
Then, if you have this hope, do your best to realize 
it; if you think that God does call you into his service, 
live as w^orth^^- of that call : at school and at the Uni- 
versity, if your friends' wishes and your own prepare 
you to enter hereafter into the ministry, see that you 
regard yourselves as vessels fashioned to honour, and 
to be preserved especially pure and bright for our 
heavenly Master's use. If you do so regard your- 
selves, and so strive to fit yourselves for your heavenly 
profession, it may be, and I trust will, that in the call 
of outward circumstances, and the wishes of your 



116 SERMON XIII. 

friends, you may hereafter recognize the true call of 
God. 

Thus, then, God calls you, at your age especially, 
to improve yourselves in the studies placed before 
you, and to consider in yourselves how you may best 
serve him hereafter, and in what particular way you 
may fit yourselves for his call to your several pro- 
fessions. The answer which you give to this call of 
God, and the punishment to which you render your- 
selves liable, will be the subject of my next sermon. 



SERMON XIV. 



LUKE XIV. 18. 

They all with one consent began to make excuse. 

So perfect is the truth of those descriptions of our 
nature which are to be found in the Scriptures ; so 
entirely do they seize those principal points which are 
applicable to all times and to all countries; that 
when we quote them in reference to the common cir- 
cumstances of our daily life, the effect is almost start- 
ling ; and it seems almost like an irreverent use of 
them, to bring them so closely in contact with our or- 
dinary language and practices. But the fact is, that 
this wonderful capability of being brought home to 
common life, constitutes a great part of their perpet- 
ual value. The parable in the text was spoken im- 
mediately with reference to the various reasons which 
made the Jews in that day refuse God's call to enter 
into the kingdom of his Son. Yet so much is human 
nature the same from one age to another, and so 
exactly does the parable describe this nature, that the 
words of the text may just as fitly be applied to our- 
selves. '^ They all with one consent began to make 



118 SERMON XIV. 

excuse." In which I shall note two things ; first, 
the disobedience to the call of God ; and then, the 
tendency to make excuses for that disobedience, by 
which, in fact, we condemn ourselves. 

In my last sermon, I spoke of that particular call 
of God which is here addressed to you. We have, all 
of us here assembled, our particular call relating to 
the several duties which our respective situations im- 
pose upon us. Do we not all of us too often refuse 
to listen to this call, and then make our disobedience 
worse by the vain excuses which we plead for it ? I 
proceed to explain what I mean more particularly. 

That the call is disobeyed is a matter of fact, of 
which our consciences cannot pretend to be ignorant. 
You are not fitting yourselves carefully and humbly 
for that state to which it may please God to call you ; 
you are too many of you not bringing up to godliness 
and good learning. But the nature of excuses given 
for not being so is w^ell worthy of our consideration. 
I do not mean that these excuses are given outwardly 
to other persons ; perhaps you would be ashamed so 
to state them : but they are, at any rate, excuses 
with which you cheat yourselves, and your own con- 
sciences, and remain satisfied with not doing what 
God requires of you. 

One of these excuses arises out of a feeling that 
your common work is not a matter of religion ; and 
that, therefore, it is not sinful to neglect it. Idleness 
and vice are considered as two distinct things ; and it 
is very common to say, and to hear it said, of such 
an one, that he is idle, but that he is perfectly free 
from vice. It would, indeed, be usini^ words contrary 



SERMON XIV. 119 

to their common meaning, if we did not make this 
distinction ; and it is true also, that a vicious boy is a 
great deal worse than an idle one, because he sins 
much more directly against his own conscience, and 
because, after all, it is worse to do evil than to leave 
good undone. But what is not vicious may yet be 
sinful ; in other words, what is not a great offence 
against men's common notions of right and wrong, 
may yet be a very great one against those purer mo- 
tives which we learn from the Scripture, and in the 
judgment of the most pure God. Thus idleness is 
not vicious, perhaps, but it is certainly sinful, and to 
strive against it is a religious duty, because it is highly 
offensive to God. This is so clearly shown in the 
parable of the ten talents, in that of the sower and 
the seed, and even in the account of the day of judg- 
ment, given by our Lord in the twenty-fifth chapter 
of St. Matthew, that it cannot require a very long 
proof. In the parable of the talents, the whole 
offence of the servant, who is cast out into outer dark- 
ness, consists in his not having made the most of the 
talent intrusted to him : in the parable of the sower, 
those soils are alike represented as bad, " which bring 
no fruit to perfection," whether the ground be overrun 
with thorns and briers, or whether it fail to produce 
any thing, from its mere shallowness and lightness. 
And in the description of the day of judgment, the sin 
for which the wicked are represented as turned into 
hell, is only that they had done no good. It is not 
mentioned that they were vicious in the common sense 
of the word ; but they were sinful inasmuch as they 
had not done what God commanded them to do. And 



120 SERMON XIV. 

if it be said that this relates to the improvement of the 
heart, rather than of the understanding, and that 
though it may be a sin to neglect deeds of charity, it 
does not follow that it should be a sin to neglect work- 
ing at books and tasks ; the answer is, that it relates to 
neglecting the main duty of our lives, be it of whatever 
nature it may. If your principal work be of a differ- 
ent kind, show what it is, and let the fruit of it be seen ; 
and if your lives are actively useful, if you are la- 
bouring in God's service heartily, and if study be taken 
up merely as a recreation, as the amusement of your 
leisure hours, — then I do not deny but that very great 
ignorance and dislike to study may be faults of a 
much lighter character ; it may be foolish rather than 
sinful to indulge them. But as it is plain that you 
have no other principal duty but that of improving 
your minds, — as you have no other way in which you 
can bring forth fruit, — so it is plain, that to neglect 
this in you is the same sort of sin as if a king were to 
neglect the care of his people, or a minister of Christ 
the spiritual benefit of the congregation committed to 
his charge : the ground does not bring forth the fruit 
which the sower looks for ; and it is, therefore, re- 
jected and judged unprofitable. 

Another excuse more nearly resembles the excuses 
made by the men in the parable ; — you do not attend 
to the call of God, because there is some other call 
which you like better. You complain, or rather you 
say to yourselves, that the work is very irksome to 
you, and you cannot see the use of it. It is likely 
enough that the work is irksome ; for so corrupt is our 
nature, that God's will is generally irksome to us, be- 



SERMON XIV. 121 

cause he is good and we are evil. The cultivation of 
your understandings is irksome to you ; and be 
assured that you will find hereafter the cultivation of 
your spirits quite as irksome : neither the labours, in- 
deed, of the body or the mind, can be compared to the 
long and painful struggles with our bad passions and 
moral corruptions, — with our pride, our lust, our 
covetousness, our worldly -mindedness. In doing 
God's will, and striving to purify ourselves from 
these, there is enough that is irksome, and ever will 
be, to our natural inclinations and feelings. But is 
this such an excuse as God will allow for not doing 
what he has commanded us ? Is it not here rather, 
that we should learn to practise our Saviour's com- 
mand — " Let a man deny himself, and take up his 
cross daily, and follow me ?" What is denying our- 
selves, but doing what we do not like, because it is 
the will of our Master ? What is to take up our cross 
daily, but to find and to bear daily some difficulty or 
other, some hinderance in ourselves or others, which 
besets and would close up our path of duty ? But it 
may be said, and said truly, that we cannot go on for 
ever doing what is irksome to us ; that we may try for a 
time, but to continue such painful efforts is absolutely 
impossible. It is so, — and what, then, is the conse- 
quence of this truth ? The Apostle's words will tell 
us : " That which the law could not do, because it was 
weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in 
the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin 
in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be 
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the Spirit." He means, that the love of Christ, and 



122 SERMON XIV. 

the aid of his Spirit, make us able to do what of our- 
selves we could not do, because they help us to love 
what by nature we esteem but do not love. We all 
know, and some may remember the beautiful words 
in which the heathen poet* has expressed the fact, that 
love makes the hardest task easy. Even so, he who 
loves God and Christ, finds in himself a stronger mo- 
tive to please Him than his natural dislike to what is 
good ; and though the struggle never ceases altogether 
till the day of the redemption of our bodies, yet the 
victory is no longer with sin, but with grace. The 
natural evil inclination, the weak and corrupt flesh, 
still finds duty painful ; but the regenerate spirit, 
born again of the Spirit of God, and sharing in its 
Father's likeness, finds the will of its Father more 
pleasant than the flesh feels it painful : and so the will 
of God is done, and the man is redeemed from the 
bondage of sin and misery. This is the case with one 
duty as well as with another : whatever we have to 
do at God's call, which we find irksome to us, it is by 
the love of Christ, and by the help of his Spirit, that 
we shall find the pleasure greater than the pain. 
Therefore, against idleness, no less than against other 
sins, the Christian has the only sure means of victory : 
and he who lives without God in the world, cannot be 
surprised, if he finds his natural inclinations to evil 

* (TxX'i]Qav fX8v, oida^ TinUdsQ • aXX sv yag fxovov 
la TiavTii XiEL ravT eiiog iioxd^r^^txia'- 
TO yaq (jpiXnv ovk I'cttiv i^ otov iiliov 
7] Tovds jvivdgbg £(j/s&\ a. t. A. 

Sophocles, QEd. Colon, v. 1615. 



SERMON XIV. 123 

loo strong for any lower motives to conquer. Thus 
much for the excuse of the irksomeness of your school 
duties : do them earnestly, and pray for God's help, 
and think what Christ has done for you, and what he 
promises to you ; and you will find that if idleness be 
sweet, the pleasure of doing the will of God, and keep- 
ing the commandments of Christ, is sweeter. 

But you may say also, that you do not see the use 
of the work which you are employed in. This, too, 
is very likely ; and, indeed, few but the oldest amongst 
you, or those endowed with the strongest natural abil- 
ities, and who have most carefully cultivated them, 
are capable as yet of seeing it. When our missiona- 
ries first introduced wheat into some of the South-sea 
islands, the natives, who had been accustomed to get 
all their fruits from the roots of plants, and in a much 
quicker time than that in which wheat ripens, began 
with great curiosity, after a certain time, to pluck up 
the corn, thinking that the root, from which they 
doubted not but that the promised bread was to come, 
must, by this time, be quite ready to dig up. But 
when they found nothing at the root, and were told 
that they must wait some time longer, and would get 
their bread, after all, not from the root, but from a 
few little seeds, which, when ripe, must be ground 
into flour, — the thing was wholly beyond their com- 
prehension ; and nothing but their strong faith in the 
superior knowledge and experience of the missiona- 
ries, prevented them from pulling up the whole crop, 
as occupying the ground uselessly. So it is with the 
fruit of your studies here : it neither shows itself so 
soon as you expect, nor is it, after all, of the kind that 



124 SERMON XIV. 

you can now most readily understand ; so that all 
that can be said to you is, work on in faith, as you 
must hereafter, even to the end of your lives, live by 
faith. Believe the experience and knowledge of 
others, who have lived to see the harvest, and who 
know and most deeply feel its value. But so far is 
true, that the fruit of your studies here will be abso- 
lutely nothing, — ^that the time spent upon them will 
be utterly lost, — if you do not exert yourselves hearti- 
ly, and enter into them with spirit. Nothing can be 
so useless as the peculiar studies of this place, if done 
in a bondman's temper, — if attended to only so far as 
you must, if learnt as lessons, with no efforts of your 
own to understand and enter into them. As I believe 
that nothing is more truly profitable to those who do 
enter into them thoroughly, so I am sure that nothing 
is a more complete waste of time to those who follow 
them carelessly, and take no pains of themselves about 
them. 

But the subject seems as yet far from exhausted : 
for another and a more common and more fatal ex- 
cuse for neglecting God's call, still remains to be spo- 
ken of. Meanwhile, before I conclude for the present, 
one caution is most needful, not for yourselves only, 
but for us also. It is impossible that you or we should 
be obeying Christ's call, if we neglect our peculiar 
duties here — the following up your studies diligently 
on your part, the directing and assisting them actively 
and zealously on ours. But it is very possible that 
both you and we should attend zealously to these du- 
ties, and yet not be obeying Christ's call either. Irk- 
some as the studies of the school are to many, there 



SERMON XIV. 125 

are some well capable of enjoying them, — there are 
some who can share with us in the pleasures of ex- 
tended knowledge, in the delights of an active exer- 
cise of the understanding. You too, and we, are liable 
to feel the excitement of praise and distinction ; aca- 
demical honours, and a high reputation, are objects 
sufficiently tempting to all of us. God grant that they 
may not be a snare to us, — that we may not make an 
idol of talent or knowledge, — that we may not desire 
to be clever, learned, and distinguished, rather than 
wise and good. I am sure that this is a danger against 
which we should pray earnestly, and watch carefully, 
— lest the fruit which we are rearing, like the fabled 
apples of Sodom, turn in our touch to rottenness. May 
God grant that we may feel all this, and, whatever 
progress we may make, that we may consider it as 
worse than useless if it beguiles us from our Chris- 
tian watchfulness, our dread of sin, and counting all 
things but loss in comparison of the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ. 



SERMON XV. 



MATT* X. 36. 

A man^sfoes shall be they of his own household. 

In my last sermon I spoke of two of those excuses 
which you sometimes make to your own consciences, 
for not obeying the particular call which God here 
addresses to you. And I then said, that there yet re- 
mained another excuse, more common than the rest, 
and far more mischievous, which I proposed to con- 
sider on another occasion. It is, indeed, an excuse 
which is one of the strongest supports of the cause of 
Satan, an excuse which will never be laid aside till 
sin and death are put down for ever : and, indeed, if 
it did cease to influence men's minds, earth w^ould be 
at once changed into something almost heavenly ; the 
greatest part of the wickedness which infests it would 
be done away with altogether. I mean that excuse 
by which we either plead the example and authority 
of our neighbours for our doing evil, or, for fear of 
their laughing at us and persecuting us, leave off to 
do good, and become even ashamed of appearing to 
care for it. In this state it may well be said, that " a 



SERMON XV. 127 

man's foes will be they of his own household ;" that 
nothing is so dangerous to his salvation as the princi- 
ples and practice of other men with whom he is liv- 
ing in daily intercourse, nothing so much to be feared, 
as that he should make their opinions his standard} in- 
stead of the declared will of God. 

This is a subject on which I have spoken often be- 
fore, and on which I may speak often again. I know 
not, indeed, to what congregation a Christian minister 
could make frequent addresses, without finding it ex- 
pedient to dwell upon this most besetting danger : I 
am sure that here it might be made the daily subject 
of our warnings to you, and yet not be mentioned too 
frequently. It is not too much to say, that scarcely 
a single day ever passes without my seeing some in- 
stance of its fatal power : every day I observe some 
wickedness, or low principle or other, for which the 
ever-ready excuse would be, that every one else says 
or does the same. In proportion, therefore, to the 
strength and commonness of this feeling, must be the 
frequency and earnestness of my attacks upon it : as 
you are, too many of you, the veriest slaves of each 
other's opinions, the veriest imitators of each other's 
conduct, so I must try to rouse you to something of a 
more independent feeling, and to break through that 
bondage which may most properly be called the bond- 
age of sin and death. 

Nothing, I suppose, shows the weakness of human 
nature more than this perpetual craving after some 
guide and support out of itself, — this living upon the 
judgment of others rather than on our own. And it 
is not to be disputed but that we do need a guide and 



128 SERMON XV. 

support out of ourselves, if we would but choose the 
right one. All the idolatry in the world grew out of 
a just sense of human weakness : men looked at them- 
selves and at the world around them ; they felt how 
little they were, and by how much greatness they were 
surrounded ; they saw how their bodies and their 
minds, their friends and their property, all the several 
elements of their happiness, were subjected to the con- 
trol of causes wholly above their power to resist ; and 
they turned, in their blindness, to worship every thing 
from whose influence upon their condition, whether for 
good or for evil, they had any thing to hope or to fear. 
This is the early form of idolatry, from the worship of 
the most glorious of God's creatures — ^the sun, and the 
moon, and the stars — to that of the vilest objects which 
have ever received the homage of a degraded super- 
stition. But, in time, the progress of knowledge de- 
stroys this kind of idolatry, by explaining the causes 
of the most wonderful operations of nature, which men 
had hitherto regarded with ignorant fear or wonder. 
Images of brass, and wood, and stone, — the sun, and 
all the host of heaven, — are^dored no longer; but the 
sense of human weakness still presses upon us, and 
averse as we are to turning to our true Guide and 
Guardian, we only change the nature of our idolatry, 
and become idolaters of our fellow-men. Before their 
influence we bow down as blindly as our fathers did 
before their images of stone. But it is an influence 
far more mischievous, because it is a real one : men 
can express opinions, and enforce them ; can encour- 
age the pursuit of some objects, and chill all fondness 
for others ; they can largely affect the happiness of 



SERMON XV. l29 

our lives. Of this idol of civilized life its worshippers 
are apt to say, " Lo, he liveth, he eateth and drink- 
eth : thou canst not say that he is no living God ; there- 
fore worship him." They would persuade us, indeed, 
that there is no power in the universe so real ; none 
which may so justly deserve our hopes and our fears. 
And we may think so, perhaps truly, if we once for- 
get the Lord our God ; for the mass of mankind can- 
not enter into the high feeling of the old philosophers ; 
and if the divinity of our own minds were one that we 
might safely in any case worship, yet in too many in- 
stances the mind is so feeble, so little possessed of any 
attribute of divinity, that it were worse than madness 
to lean on a staff so rotten. 

I hold it, therefore, to be certain, that in our days, 
and for the bulk of mankind, there is a choice of only 
two things : they must worship God, or one another ; 
they must seek the praise and favour of God above all 
things, or the praise and favour of man. Being too 
weak to stand alone, they must lean upon the Rock of 
Ages, or upon the perishing and treacherous pillar of 
human opinion. This is the case with men, and this, 
in an equal, or even in a greater degree, is the case 
with you. 

But the evil here is particularly great, because the 
standard of excellence here approved of is so exceed- 
ingly false and low. It would be curious to gather 
and to record the several points in a character which 
boys respect and admire, in order to show what a 
crooked rule they walk by. In the true scale of ex- 
cellence, moral perfection is most highly valued, then 
comes excellence of understanding, and, last of all, 

6 



130 SERMON XVs 

strength and activity of body. But at school this m 
just reversed. A strong and active boy is very much 
respected ; a clever boy is also admired ; — ^but a good 
and well-principled boy meets with very little encour- 
agement. Again, natural abilities are admired and 
valued ; but it is the tendency of many persons to ad- 
mire them much less when united with sound sense 
and industry, than when they are to be found in one 
who does not cultivate them, but abuses them by his 
indolence, or by converting them to some purpose of 
wickedness or folly. It is indeed remarkable, that no- 
where else is the habitual breach of our duty so coun- 
tenanced as it is here. A soldier, who was notorious- 
ly idle and cowardly, would not only be punished by 
his superiors, but would be an object of dislike and 
contempt to his comrades themselves. So it is with 
workmen : if a man works ill and lazily, it is not the 
way to gain credit with his companions any more 
than his employer. And this is but a natural feelings 
— that it is disgraceful to do our business ill, let it be 
of what kind it may ; that it is contemptible either to 
be doing nothing, or to have an employment, and to 
neglect it. But here, on the contrary, idleness is 
with many rather a glory, and industry is considered 
as a reproach. When a boy first comes from home, 
full of the natural desire of doing his duty, of improv- 
ing himself, and getting on well, he is presently beset 
by the ridicule of all the worthless and foolish boys 
around him, who want to sink him to their own level. 
How completely true is it, that his foes are they of 
his own household ; — ^that is, they who are most im- 
mediately about him, those of his own age, and his 



SERMON XV. 131 

own place in the school. They become his idol : be- 
fore their most foolish, most low, and most wicked 
voices, he gives up his affections, his understanding, 
and his conscience ; from this mass of ignorance and 
falsehood, and selfishness, he looks for the guide of his 
opinions and his conduct. The strong language of 
scorn, with which the prophet describes the idolatry 
of old, may well be applied to this no less foolish and 
no less wicked idolatry of our own days : '^ He burn- 
eth part thereof in the fire, with part thereof he baketh 
bread, and the residue he maketh a god, even his graven 
image. A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that 
he cannot deliver his soul, or say. Is there not a lie 
in my right hand ?" So it may be said of you, — You 
know what the idol is that you worship : you know 
how ignorant, how selfish, how unkind, often how false 
and how mean, are those boys whose ridicule you fear, 
and whose applause you covet. You know that in 
sickness or in affliction, they are not the persons to 
whom you would go for comfort : you know, if you 
were to commit any offence against their notions of 
right and wrong, how little allowance they would 
make for you, how little compassion they would show 
for your distress. And yet, for the sake of the good 
opinion of persons such as these, or in order to avoid 
their ridicule, you would struggle to overcome your 
own best affections, you would harden your conscience, 
distress and displease your dearest earthly friends, and 
grieve the Spirit of God, who calls you to a better 
mind. You are bound by this fatal chain, " A de- 
ceived heart hath turned you aside, so that you can- 
not deliver your souls, or say, Is there not a lie in my 



132 SERMON XV. 

right hand ?" Am I not sacrificing my happiness in 
earth and heaven to a lying spirit, which calls evil 
good, and good evil : which puts bitter for sweet, and 
sweet for bitter ? 

But where the terror of ridicule does not act to 
make you do what you know to be wrong, yet the 
low standard of right and wrong which exists among 
you is sometimes mischievous to those, who in many 
respects think and act above it, by furnishing them 
with an excuse for indulging occasionally in some 
convenient but unworthy practice. It is then so natu- 
ral an excuse to deceive our conscience, that we are 
but doing what every one else does, that we are but 
doing what no one else considers to be wrong. We 
make it a sort of merit, that in general we do follow 
a higher standard ; and, on the strength of this, we 
think ourselves entitled to follow the lower one some- 
times, when we are particularly tempted to do so. I 
could imagine, that St. James had had much expe- 
rience of people of this description, from several pas- 
sages in his epistle. Those double-minded men, whom 
he bids to purify their hearts, and whom he tells not 
to think that they shall receive any thing of the Lord ; 
those whom he reminds, that " to him who knoweth 
to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin ;" — they 
apparently were persons who lived in general far 
above the heathen standard, who only wished to keep 
in reserve some few convenient points on which they 
might gratify their evil inclinations, and say in their 
excuse, that no one else thought there was any harm 
in such things. They thought and knew that there 
was harm in them, for their eyes had been opened by 



SERMON XV. 133 

Gospel light, and they would be judged by their own 
knowledge, and not by their neighbour's ignorance. 
Vain, therefore, is the attempt to serve God and mam- 
mon together ; to reconcile the low standard of your 
companions with that purer and higher one with which 
it has been your happiness to be made acquainted — 
your happiness, if not almost only but altogether you 
become conformed to it ; or else not your happiness, 
but your certain and most just condemnation. 

One thing, in which this low standard fearfully 
shows itself, I cannot but take this occasion of men- 
tioning. I have observed, from time to time, that the 
sin of falsehood is not considered among you so hate- 
ful as Christ teaches us to regard it ; or even as the 
common notions of worldly honour, in this respect 
most true in their judgment, estimate it amongst men 
in the world. It is really awful to witness the quan- 
tity of direct falsehood, of equivocation, unfair con- 
cealment, false representations, and all the train of 
similar wickedness, of which too many of you continu- 
ally allow yourselves to be guilty. Your aim seems 
to be, not to tell the truth, but to steer dexterously be- 
tween the truth and a lie. And this is as foolish as 
it is wicked. It is impossible to steer between them : 
for he who once allows himself any other object than 
the truth, — who suffers himself to try to make his 
neighbour believe something which is not exactly the 
real fair state of the case, — is already a liar in his 
heart. The real guilt of falsehood consists in the 
attempt to disguise the truth ; that is, to deceive : and 
it matters not by what form of words this object is 
effected ; whether it be by equivocating, or conceal- 
ing, or misrepresenting, or by direct lying. It is the 



134 SERMON XV. 

truth that God loves, and which is the peculiar glory 
of the Gospel ; insomuch that St. Paul twice notices, as 
the first mark of a converted heart, that, putting away 
lying, we should " speak every one truth with his 
neighbour ; for we are members one of another." And 
this you are all taught at home : from your earliest 
childhood you have known the wickedness of false- 
hood, the duty of absolute sincerity and truth. But 
here you find another standard, which tells you that 
it is fair to deceive and lie to serve your own turn, at 
least when you are speaking to a master. You let 
this false standard lead you away from your duty to 
God and man ; you make it your idol, and fall down 
and worship it, and sacrifice to it every thing that 
ought to be most precious, even your own souls, which 
Christ died to save. 

For a short time, this fatal spell will now be taken 
off* from you ; for a few weeks you will breathe in a 
purer air, and be subjected, I trust, to a gentler and a 
holier influence. Some, nay many, and I hope most 
of you, will see in your own homes examples of a 
very different kind ; will hear there a very different 
language from what they have seen and heard around 
them here. The evil spirit will leave his hold for a 
time, and you may breathe and speak in freedom. 
But remember that he will surely return again : a 
few short weeks, and we shall be met here once more, 
and the same temptations will be again besetting you. 
Would that you w ould use the precious interval that 
is now granted to you ! Would that some of you, 
whose principles have been somewhat stained, and 
their practice corrupted during the last five months, 
may purify yourselves from these soils ; may refresh 



SERMON XV. 135 

and strengthen your fainting spirits with a new draught 
of the well of everlasting life ! And I will add our 
Lord's solemn words to Peter : " Simon, Simon, be- 
hold, Satan hath desired to have thee, that he may sift 
thee as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy 
faith fail not ; and when thou art converted, strengthen 
thy brethren.^' If Satan has desired to have you, and 
if his desire has been in part fulfilled, — if you have 
been tempted, like Peter, to deny your Saviour, — yet 
that same Saviour, who prayed for Peter, prays for 
you also, that your faith may not fail finally. Re- 
member, too, and strive that his last words also may 
apply to you — " When thou art converted, strengthen 
thy brethren." You are not called to an inactive state ; 
you cannot serve Christ in secret, when his enemies 
are loud in denying him. You must confess him be- 
fore men, even at the risk of being put out of the syna- 
gogue ; that is, of being laughed or reviled out of their 
society. Still you must confess him, and not be 
ashamed of his Gospel. But yet there is a comfort 
for you, that may lawfully encourage you. They 
who were put out of the synagogue, who were perse- 
cuted and reviled every where for preaching the Gos- 
pel of Christ; they lived to see the day when the 
kingdom of Christ was greatly multiplied, and the 
synagogue of the Jews sunk before it. What if this 
be, in part at least, your case ; if, by firmness, by 
union amongst yourselves, — (for they who feared the 
Lord, in the midst of wickedness, were wont to speak 
often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and 
heard it,) — by patient continuance in well-doing, and 
by a Christian prudence, teaching you not to disfigure 
your profession by any needless severity, or by folly, 



136 SERMON XV. 

you could not only save yourselves from being cor- 
rupted, but turn back the torrent of evil upon itself, 
and win others from the service of Satan to join with 
you ? What, if owing to your efforts, always in the 
strength, and with your sole trust in your Saviour's 
aid, it should be no more reckoned excusable to lie or 
to equivocate, no more thought honourable to be idle, 
no more thought poor-spirited to walk steadfastly in 
the path of duty ? Even this is not beyond hope, if 
we all of us here assembled, who do love the Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity, — you in your station, and 
your teachers in theirs, — labour, with all holy dili- 
gence, to advance Christ's kingdom. But if not, — if 
this be denied you, — and if you must still have to 
struggle against triumphant evil, — still remember 
whose arm will never fail you, and think of that hour 
when the triumph will surely be your own to all eter- 
nity. Think of the blessedness of being confessed by 
Christ before his Father, and the holy angels, because 
you in the world had confessed him. Think of the 
glory of receiving such praise as the most sublime of 
poets has expressed, in a strain not surely uninspired 
by that " Eternal Spirit" whose aid he had sincerely 
sought — 

*' Servant of God ! well done ! well hast thou fought 
The better fight, who singly hast maintained 
Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of Truth, in word mightier than they in arms ; 
And, for the testimony of truth, hast borne 
Universal reproach, far worse to bear 
Than violence : — for this was all thy care, 
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
Judged thee perverse." 



SERMON XVI- 



JOHN XIII. 13, 14. 

Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye say well ; for 
so I am. If I-, then J your Lord and Master, have 
washed your feet ; ye ought also to wash one another^ s 
feet. 

Of all the words and actions of our Lord that have 
been recorded in the Gospels, there is none, perhaps, 
more remarkable, none more unlike every other sys- 
tem of morals with which we are acquainted, than 
the action alluded to in the text. It was done delib- 
erately and purposely for our instruction ; to leave us 
a lesson of a particular kind, such as Christ well knew 
that we most needed. Indeed, it is a lesson which we 
all need, the old and the young alike ; we need it at 
every time of life, we need it at every age of the world, 
we need it in every condition of society : but yet, if 
there be one period of life, one age of the world, one 
country, and one particular condition, in which it be 
particularly wanted, I may say with truth that yours 
is that period of life, and that ours is that age of the 
world, that country, and that condition. 
6* 



138 SERMON XVI. 

Some of you have heard me, on other occasions, 
dwell on the fearful contrast between the effects which 
Christianity ought to have produced, and which are 
spoken of in Scripture as its natural consequences, 
and those which have actually flowed from it. Our 
Saviour said, ^'By this shall all men know that you 
are my disciples, if you have love one towards an- 
other." This love of one another was to be the mark 
and seal of Christians ; it was to distinguish them from 
other men; so that those who were not Christians, 
looking upon their lives, and seeing them free from 
the jealousies, the quarrels, the violent and bad pas- 
sions of other men, might confess that God was in them 
of a truth, and that so heavenly a fruit could proceed 
from nothing else than the tree of life eternal. Now, 
if we look through history, or if, without going to 
books, we look round upon our ow^n neighbourhood, — 
nay, even if we come still closer home, and look round 
our own household, upon those with whom we eat and 
drink daily, at the same table, — nay, if coming nearer 
still, we look upon our very own relations, the parents, 
and wives and husbands, sons and daughters, brothers 
and sisters, between whom love might surely be ex- 
pected to reign, — what is the sight that we shall wit- 
ness? But better and more fitting is it to look into 
one place which will speak more clearly and certainly 
to us than all the rest : let us each look into our own 
hearts, and ask our consciences what we find there. 
Alas, my brethren, if he only dwelleth in God who 
dwelleth in love, surely we are not in God, nor God in us. 
Even the kindest and most benevolent of us all, they in 
whom, to the eyes of others, nothing ungentle, nothing 



SERMON XVI. 139 

uncharitable is visible — even with them the heart know- 
eth his own bitterness ; they know — and God, who is 
greater than their heart, knoweth also — how much that 
is harsh, and selfish, and violent, and unkind, mingles 
itself with their inmost spirit ; how far they are distant 
from that perfect love with which God loved us, and 
with which we ought also to love one another. 

But the text speaks of one particular kind of love 
more especially, — the love of our poorer brethren. It 
must have been a solemn lesson which our Lord chose 
to teach so earnestly on that last night of his presence 
with his disciples; and which he not only gave in 
words, but expressed it in a most significant action, to 
impress it the deeper on their minds and ours. Ob- 
serve the connexion of the words of the Evangelist: 
"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things 
into his hands, and that he was come from God, and 
went to God :" what did he upon this knowledge? did 
he reveal to them some high mysteries concerning the 
divine nature, such as kings, and prophets, and sages 
had long desired to learn? No: "he riseth from sup- 
per, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel, and 
girded himself. After that he poureth water into a 
basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to 
wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." 
This was what Jesus did, "knowing that the Father 
had given all things into his hands, and that he was 
come from God, and went to God." Surely no diviner 
comment could be given upon the words of the Scrip- 
tures, that " God is love, and he who dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God, and God in him!" A command so 
given and so enforced, must surely have been of the 



140 SERMON XVI. 

deepest importance. ^'If I, your Lord and Master, 
have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one 
another's feet." 

I call this text a command to one particular kind of 
love, "the love of our poorer brethren." It is some- 
times said, that it was a command to practise humility : 
and so it was in one sense of the word ; but they who 
so explain it, deprive it of a great portion of its pe- 
culiar value. Our Lord taught humility, in the com- 
mon sense of the term, when he took a child and set 
him in the midst of his disciples, and said, " Whosoever 
shall humble himself as this little child, the same is 
greatest in the kingdom of heaven." But it is mani- 
fest that by washing his disciples' feet, and telling 
them that they ought also to wash one another's feet, 
he did not mean exactly the same thing as this. His 
meaning was, to enforce not so much a sacrifice of 
pride, as of luxurious and careless selfishness; to teach 
us to do, not those things which it was humiliating, 
but which it was troublesome, unpleasant, and disa- 
greeable to do ; that is, precisely, to perform duties of 
kindness, even of the most humble sort, to those who 
need them the most ; not to shrink from the meanest 
offices in visiting and relieving the bodily wants and 
sufferings of the poor. 

If there were nothing else, I am sure that the un- 
willingness with which we hear this command, and 
our anxiety to fix another meaning to it, would alone 
show how much we require it. It is, too, I am sure, 
particularly needed by us who are here assembled. 
The duties of attending on sickness are so much more 
familiar to women, even of every condition, and there is 



SERMON XVI. 141 

SO much more of the kindness required for them in wo- 
man's nature than in man's, that it is our own sex in 
particular, and, above all, our own station in society, 
that needs this lesson. To us the abodes of the poor, 
and still more their sick-beds, are a sight with which 
we are but little acquainted : in fact, our knowledge of 
the poor, that is, of the largest portion of our Christian 
brethren living immediately around us, is next to 
nothing. And it is chiefly from this ignorance, I 
think, that our feelings and relations towards the poor 
altogether are so thoroughly unchristian. You well 
know how early you learn to call every one belonging 
to the poorer clasess by a contemptuous name, by which 
you distinguish them from those belonging to the rich- 
er classes. It is very true that all who use this name 
do not intend any insult by it; they use it without 
thinking of its meaning, just as men commonly swear 
and use profane language, without meaning or con- 
sidering what they are saying. Yet, as no man of 
habitual piety will be found to swear, so I am inclined 
to think that no one who felt a Christian kindness 
towards the poor, who lived in the daily recollection 
of what they were and what he himself was, would 
ever speak of them by that insulting name to which I 
have alluded. And be assured of this, that our words 
have an insensible but certain effect upon our feelings, 
even when used most carelessly. From always hear- 
ing the poor spoken of, from always speaking of them 
yourself by this name, you get habitually to think 
meanly of them, to look upon them almost as a differ- 
ent race, between whom and yourselves there is a 
wide gulf fixed, so wide as to cut off all sympathy. 
Meantime, those of the poor with whom you do become 



142 SERMON XVI. 

personally acquainted, are persons of whom you can- 
not but think meanly, although you ought to consider 
how much of what you despise in them is merely 
owing to your own encouragement. If I were to go 
through a list of the most respectable poor families in 
this place, few of you, I am afraid, would know any 
thing about them ; but if I were to name those persons 
who are least respectable, your knowledge of them, I 
fear, would be far more intimate. So again I have 
been more than once struck by observing how much 
eagerness many of you have shown in giving things 
to beggars, evidently of the very most undeserving sort, 
because they amused you by their tricks and buffoon- 
ery ; while the same hands, which were so lavish to 
the worthless, had, perhaps, never learnt to relieve 
the real necessities of the honest and uncomplaining. 
Nor let it be thought that these are little things, unfit 
to be spoken of in the house of God. It is a most vain 
superstition, and most mischievous, as all superstition 
ever is, to think that the mention of little common 
things is unworthy of this holy place, when out of 
these little things our hearts and lives are daily form- 
ing into a fitness for eternal happiness or eternal misery. 
The things of which I have now spoken, — that con- 
temptuous word by which you call the poor, — that want 
of acquaintance with the respectable among them, — 
that familiarity with the profligate, — that encourage- 
ment given to the idler who makes beggary his trade, — 
that neglect of those real sufferers, in whose persons 
Christ himself vouchsafes to ask our charity ; all these 
things help to form that disposition towards the poor in 
after life, from which our country is at this moment so 
fearfully suffering. Tt is not hard-heartedness, — much 



SERMON XVI. 143 

less is it wilful oppression, — but it is an absence of that 
true feeling of Christian brotherhood which Christ's 
words in my text inculcate: ^^Ye call me Master and 
Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your 
Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you ought 
also to wash one another's feet." It is those little 
words, "one onother," which express so much, and 
which we are so apt to lose sight of. These words 
show, that the rich and the poor are members one of 
another, not two distinct castes, — I had almost said two 
distinct races. These words ought to take away that 
feeling of merit which we are but too apt to attach to 
our charity. No man is proud of being kind to his 
brother or his near friend ; he would only be ashamed 
of himself if he were not kind. So, if we felt aright 
to the poor, that they are, in the highest of all relations, 
our brethren — children of the same heavenly Father, 
called all alike brethren by Him who, having taken 
part of our flesh and blood, was not ashamed to call 
all God's earthly children by that name ; if we so felt, 
should we not, indeed, think that the words, "one an- 
other," might well describe the relations of the rich 
and the poor; should we not fully enter into the spirit 
of the Apostle's words : " Beloved, if God so loved us, 
we ought also to love one another?" 

But, in conclusion, I must remember that after hear- 
ing all that I have said, the practical question may 
yet be asked, "What must we do?" How can we, 
each of us, bring home to ourselves the lesson which 
Christ teaches us ? You can do it, by leaving off what 
is contrary to it, at any rate ; by ceasing from words 
which are contemptuous and insulting to the poor ; by 
breaking off familiarity, by forbearing to encourage 



144 SERMON XVI. 

that unworthy portion of the poor, who are likely to 
give you a most unjust and hard impression of the 
whole body. But I am sure many amongst you, to 
say the least, must have opportunities of doing much 
more. Many amongst you must have poor neighbours 
around you at home, from whom you may learn what 
poverty is, how great, how awful a claim it has upon 
all, and much more than all that we can do for it. 
Many amongst you must have friends who would be 
delighted to encourage you in the disposition to know 
the poor, and to love them; and whose experience 
would teach you how to avoid all extravagance and 
folly, which an ignorant zeal will naturally fall into. 
But it were foolish, in this case, to dread the effects of 
over zeal ; much more is it to be dreaded, that there 
should be no zeal at all ; that your holy-days should be 
devoted only to your own pleasure; that, amidst the 
joyousness and festivities with which wealth surrounds 
itself at this coming Christmas season, you should be- 
stow no thought on that large body of your neighbours 
to whom Christmas is only a season of suffering, a 
season of cold, and darkness, and dreariness. If such 
be the case, it is most awful to think that a curse is 
on all our enjoyments; that our mirth and our festivity 
are but those of the rich man in the parable, who, 
when he died and was buried, found himself instantly 
in eternal torments, and was told that all the good 
things which he could expect throughout eternity, he 
had already received : all good was gone, and all evil 
was in store for him for ever. May God give us a 
better mind, — better for the worldly comfort of others, 
much more, infinitely better for the eternal welfare of 
our own souls. 



SERMON XVII. 



REV. XXII. 10-12. 

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the pro- 
phecy of this hook : for the time is at hand. He 
that is unjust, let him he unjust still : and he which 
is filthy, let him he filthy still : and he that is right- 
eous, let him he righteous still : and he that is holy, 
let him he holy still. And hehold, I come quickly, 
and my reward is with me, to give every man accord- 
ing as his work shall he. 

So much presses upon the mind in reading these 
verses, that I hardly know how to put in order, or 
how to limit within any fit bounds, the various thoughts 
which they suggest. There is so much in the sepa- 
rate parts of them, and so much in them when taken 
together ; there is so much in the particular time at 
which they were written, and in the very place which 
they hold in the volume of the Scriptures, that they 
seem better fitted to be the subject of a course of 
sermons, than to furnish matter for one only. 

The place which they hold in the volume of the 
New Testament must strike the most careless ob- 



146 SERMON XVII. 

server. If you open your Bibles, you will find them in 
the last page of the last book of the whole Scriptures. 
All the books in the Bible are by no means placed in 
the order in which they were written ; but it happens 
that the Book of the Revelation, as it stands the last, 
so was it written the last ; since that time, the Book 
of the Holy Scriptures has received no other addition. 
And further, this Book of the Revelation was written 
in the last years of the life of the last Apostle who 
had received the Holy Ghost, in a special manner, 
for teaching with authority the things of the kingdom 
of God. Christianity had received its appointed 
signs, and no more were to be vouchsafed to it : all 
truth necessary to salvation had been once taught by 
men speaking what the Holy Ghost inspired, and such 
infallible teaching was from henceforth to be no more 
repeated. When Christ ascended into heaven, the 
Comforter descended in his place ; and although God 
was no longer personally visible, yet the mighty works 
which the Apostles wrought through his aid, and the 
knowledge of things kept secret from the foundation 
of the world, which they derived from the teaching of 
his Spirit, made the presence of God among them no 
less manifest to the world, than when Christ had been 
with them in the body. But now, when the last Apos- 
tle was on the point of being called to his Lord, 
Christianity seemed completely to be launched upon 
the ocean of the world, to struggle against all the 
storms which might assail it. In that full sense in 
which Christ had foretold it, he was now to be manifest- 
ed only to those who loved him ; for the rest, neither 
sign nor wonder, nor teaching of infallible truth and 



SERMON XVII. 147 

unalloyed wisdom, would be granted to them any- 
more. Behold us here, then, still in this state in 
which the Church of Christ for more than seventeen 
centuries and a half has been striving, — still seeing 
no sign from heaven, — still vainly seeking amidst our 
difficulties and doubts for any living voice of infallible 
wisdom, — yet still with heaven and hell close beside 
us every hour, — still the servants of Christ, whether 
we choose to follow him or no, and reserved to stand, 
whether living or dead, before his judgment-seat at 
his coming. 

Let us listen then, and bear ever with us in our 
inmost hearts the last words spoken by our Lord, when 
he committed his Church to its season of trial : " The 
time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust 
still : and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still : and 
he that is righteous, let him be righteous still : and he 
that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold, I 
come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give 
every man according as his work shall be." Observe 
he says, the " time is at hand," and '' I come quick- 
ly," although in the preceding prophecy the course 
of trials to which the Church would be exposed, is 
described as running through a long succession of 
ages. Undoubtedly to every reader of these words, 
in every age, the time is at hand, and his Lord is 
coming quickly — his own time of watching, of trial, 
and of temptation, is passing away with every hour ; 
and the longer we live, the shorter seems the period 
which we have lived through, and the space between 
our life and our death seems continually a more in- 
significant point in the midst of eternity. The use of 



148 SERMON XVII. 

the consideration of Christ's coming speedily, is to 
encourage the patient, and to give a timely warning 
to the careless ; and for this purpose the speediness 
of our own departure from this world is the same as 
if the world itself were within a few years to perish. 
But the more literal sense of the words of the text 
seems to imply that the end of the world was near at 
hand, when compared with the period that had elapsed 
since its first creation. Whether this be so or not, is 
certainly far beyond the reach of human foresight : but 
the exceeding rapidity with which society has been 
moving forwards in the last three centuries, seems to 
show that man's work of replenishing the earth must, 
in the common course of things, be accomplished be- 
fore much more than two thousand years from the 
time of Christ's first coming shall have passed away. 
But leaving this, let us consider the words left us 
for our instruction during the time that Christ is ab- 
sent from us, be that time of greater or of less dura- 
tion. '^ He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : 
and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." Every 
year that we live, these words seem to me to acquire 
a more awful meaning. When we see iniquity 
abounding and faith waxing cold, — when we see the 
most monstrous doctrines of ungodliness and wicked- 
ness uttered boldly in the very face of heaven, — we 
are apt to be surprised and somewhat disappointed 
that God does not at once assert his majesty, and that 
vengeance does not yet burst forth upon those who 
seem to delight in braving it. It is the impatient 
spirit with which the servants in the parable wanted 
at once to go and gather up the tares which the enemy 



SERMON XVII. 149 

had mingled with the good seed. But the answer 
given by their lord is substantially the same with the 
words of the text : " Let both grow together until the 
harvest.'^ " He that is unjust, let him be unjust 
still : and he that is righteous, let him be righteous 
still." Godwin not interfere with any show of his 
almighty power, either to convert the one or to en- 
courage the other. Once he has declared himself, 
and given to the world visible signs of his interference : 
but he does so now no more. Since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were from the be- 
ginning of the world ; wickedness often prospers, and 
goodness is often oppressed : it seems as though God 
had left them both to stand or fall by their own efforts ; 
and the only reason to make a man follow either good 
or evil, is because he loves the one in his heart, and 
hates the other. He that loves evil may go on un- 
checked and unterrified ; he who loves good must 
love it for itself, or must follow it by faith in what he 
hopes will be hereafter, though he can see no signs 
of it at present. 

It cannot be too often repeated, — and never was 
the lesson more needed than at this hour, — that it is 
nothing but a thorough love of righteousness and 
goodness that can, with the blessing of God, keep our 
faith alive. To a good man the evidence of the Gos- 
pel is abundantly satisfactory ; to a bad man it seems 
to have no force at all. Unless our principles support 
our faith, our faith will not long uphold our princi- 
ples. In times of outward peace, such as those which 
we have long experienced, nothing is more common 
than to see men of unholy lives, and with no real love 



150 SERMOW KVll, 

of goodness, not only loud in the profession, but un- 
disturbed in the belief of Christianity. Attacks upon 
their faith do not come in their way, or if they do, 
they are made only by a small and inconsiderable 
party, and are urged weakly and ignorantly. In this 
state of things, the defenders of Christianity have the 
public voice on their side ; their arguments are ap- 
plauded, and their victory is really complete ; for it 
is gained over adversaries whose blows have been 
struck timidly and blindly, who have fought under the 
disadvantage of having the general feeling against 
them. But in times of another kind, when the general 
feeling becomes divided, and the cause of Christianity 
has lost many of its artificial supports, nothing will 
support our faith effectually, but a real and earnest 
love of its principles, and a lively hatred of every 
thing that is evil. When unbelief, instead of being 
received with general abhorrence, becomes generally 
fashionable, — ^when our profession of faith loses that 
confidence which is given by seeing that the majority 
are on its side, — then a man must begin in earnest to 
examine his own foundations — ^to look for a stay within 
him, when outward aids begin to fall away. Woe to 
him in that moment, if his support be only intellec- 
tual, — if he relies alone on the books or the argu- 
ments which he had been used to consider all-triumph- 
ant. Many of my present hearers require to be 
warned on this point most earnestly. The question 
between Christianity and unbelief is now assuming a 
form essentially different from that which it wore in 
the last century ; and thus the popular books of evi- 
dences are becoming daily more insufficient to meet 



SERMON XVII, 151 

the arguments and objections with which you will 
now, on your entrance into the world, find your faith 
assailed. Most of the books of evidences which you 
have read are directed against deists, that is, against 
persons who professed that they believed in God, but 
did not believe in his Son, Christ Jesus. Against 
deists and their arguments, the books I allude to (But- 
ler, for instance, and Leslie) are, indeed, quite tri- 
umphant; but the battle is now fought on different 
grounds, and you will be attacked, either by those 
who would represent every thing as doubtful, and 
who, having no opinions of their own to defend, avail 
themselves of that weakness of the human mind, 
which suffers its doubts to disturb the tranquillity of 
its knowledge ; or else, by those who say at once, that 
there is no God, and that our life will utterly and 
eternally perish with the decay of our mortal bodies. 
And this last opinion, as it is one which, to a good 
man, would bring distraction of mind little short of 
madness, so it is one which, to a bad man, the deeper 
he advances in wickedness, will become constantly 
more probable and more natural. God does, indeed, 
send on such persons strong delusion, that they should 
believe a lie, because they loved not the truth, but had 
pleasure in unrighteousness. And the beginnings of 
this fearful state, this sin against the Holy Ghost, for 
which there is no forgiveness, are nearer at hand to 
us, perhaps, than we are disposed to fancy. He who 
indulges violent passions, who permits himself to re- 
turn evil for evil, — to despise the notion of forgiving 
from the heart those who have done him wrong, — he 
is becoming ready to wish that the Gospel were not 



152 SERMON XVII. 

true, and, as he who denieth the Son, the same hath 
not the Father, he is becoming ready to wish, and if 
to wish, he will soon assuredly believe, that there is 
no judgment at all, and no God. Or, again, he who 
commits fornication, or elky other sensual sin, — who 
endeavours to cheat himself with the notion that these 
things are of no great consequence, — he soon learns 
to hate the Gospel, which declares that no fornicator 
or unclean person hath any inheritance in the kingdom 
of Christ or of God ; and from hating he soon comes 
to disbelieve, and to deny both the Son and the Father. 
Or still, again, he who from strong natural powers 
and lively spirits, is disposed to think too highly of 
himself, — who seldom knows what it is to feel rever- 
.ence or admiration, and far less to feel humility, — he 
cannot bear Christianity, which exalts God so highly, 
and teaches man that he can only be exalted by hum- 
bling himself ; with him the notions of independence, 
and vigour, and power, and courage of mind, are as 
fatal as a violent nature or a sensual nature in the 
other cases that I have described ; and the man be- 
comes colder, and harder, and prouder, and more ig- 
norant of himself, till he reverences nothing, admires 
nothing, and loves nothing, but himself and his own 
mind. All these are roads to atheism ; and if any 
man will follow them far enough, he will surely be- 
come an atheist, although he may read ever so con- 
stantly, and be unable to answer the arguments which 
have been drawn for the being and attributes of God. 
So it is, " he that is filthy, let him be filthy still : and 
he that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he that 
is righteous, let him be righteous still : and he that is 



SERMON xvn» 153 

holy, let him be holy still." When arguments for 
atheism are brought forward, nothing seems to me so 
decisive against them as this certain fact, — that the 
Burest way to make them seem convincing to our 
minds, is to plunge as deeply as possible into wicked- 
ness. Any man may easily and certainly become an 
atheist if he will but reject all good practices, all self- 
examination, all scruple of crime, and do the bidding 
of the devil without reserve. 

On the contrary, ^^ he that is holy, let him be holy 
still. '^ He too will grow steadier and steadier in his 
faith, in proportion as he dreads sin more, and is 
more watchful over his life, and heart, and temper, 
and learns to deny himself, and to love his neighbour, 
and thus becomes more and more conformed to the 
Spirit of God. To him God manifests himself, not 
by signs of his power, not by pouring irresistible con- 
viction upon his understanding, but by speaking in 
the still small voice of peace, and hope, and love un- 
feigned, by giving him already an earnest of that 
blessed state of mind, which they who see God and 
live in him continually and of necessity enjoy. Truly, 
^^ he will be holy still," let the temptations, and diffi- 
culties, and dangers of his course be what they may. 
His thought is still, " Lord, to whom but thee shall I 
go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. With 
thee, and with those who have followed thee, I will 
gladly stake my hopes for this world, and for eternity : 
I desire nothing but to follow in thy steps here, and, 
if it may be, through thy blood shed for my manifold 
sins and imperfections, to be where thou art hereafter. 
Nature may sometimes be impatient, may think that 
7 



154 SERMON XVII. 

thy coming is too long delayed, may wish to exchange 
faith for sight, and hope for enjoyment. I may say 
indeed, Come, Lord Jesus ; for such are the words of 
thy church, the bride, and of thy Spirit, which teaches 
the church what to wish and to pray for. But if 
thou still lingerest, let me wait in patience thy time, 
and occupy myself the while steadily in thy service. 
There is enough for me, and for every one of thy 
true servants, to do upon earth ; do thou guide us, and 
strengthen us, and give us an undying zeal for the 
work. There are wants to be relieved, bodily and 
spiritual ; ignorance to be enlightened ; falsehood 
and wickedness to be reproved ; truth to be upheld, 
defended, and declared. Grant that every year of 
life there may be some such blessed fruit of our la- 
bour : yet grant, also, that we do not magnify our- 
selves in our own works ; that we rejoice, not because 
the devils are subject to us, but because thou hast 
loved us, and hast written our names in heaven, and 
wilt bring us through thy grace to thy own eternal 
mg-nsion with the Father.'' 



SERMON XVIII. 



JOHN XIII. 10. 

He that is washed, needeth not, save to wash his feet, 
hut is clean every whit : and ye are clean, hut not 
all. 

Hardly, since the very earliest days of the Gospel, 
could these words have been repeated with exactly the 
same truth to any assembly of Christians. In saying 
to his disciples, " Ye are clean, but not all," our Lord 
declared, that the clean were by far the greater num- 
ber amongst them, although there was one single 
person who was an exception. Eleven of those who 
heard him were pronounced to be clean, while one only 
was found wanting. What a state of almost heavenly 
blessedness should we think it now, if, when looking 
round upon any number of persons assembled in any 
Christian place of worship, we could persuade our- 
selves that eleven out of every twelve were such as 
Christ would pronounce to be clean ! — not indeed free 
from sin, and far less removed above the reach of 
temptation ; but yet so sound in principle, so sincere 
in their love of Chxist, that they would need only to 



156 SERMON XVIII. 

wash the feet, — to cleanse themselves from the eom« 
mon and almost necessary stains which daily life 
brings with it; and would then be accounted by 
Christ to be "clean every whit." Surely, when we 
look around on what men are, we should think that 
our lot was thrown in a most happy ground, if not 
eleven out of every twelve, but even one half of those 
whom we met in the house of God, could be thought 
such as Christ would call " clean." 

The words of the text were spoken by our Lord 
just before he was beginning the season of his suffer- 
ings, and only a few hours before he was crucified. 
His disciples were all around him, and one of them 
said, that he was ready to go with his Master into 
prison and to death. The words were spoken in en- 
tire sincerity, and, therefore, Christ declared, that he 
who spoke them was clean, although he knew that 
when the trial came they would not be fulfilled in 
practice. Even so we are here assembled at the be- 
ginning of the week in which we celebrate the memory 
of our Lord's sufferings, -and only a few days before 
the time when we shall be invited to partake of his 
most blessed body and blood, in the sacrament of the 
holy communion. May we suppose Christ speaking 
to us as he did to his Apostles ; could we hope that 
he would say to us, "^Ye are clean, but not all;' 
although some few of you may be lost, yet by far 
the greater number are my true disciples, and will 
follow me whithersoever I go ?" Or would he rather 
speak to us in the language which he himself foretold 
would be more fitting in these latter days, — " When 
the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith upon the 



SERMON XVIII. 157 

earth ?" Our own consciences will be able best to 
tell us ; if we examine a little what it was in our 
Lord's Apostles which made him say of them, that, 
with one exception, they were all clean. 

We have said already, that it certainly was not 
because they were free from sin altogether. The 
Gospels contain many instances of faults, even 
amongst the most eminent of their number, which 
prove quite clearly that they were far from perfect. 
There are marks of ambition, of violence, of worldly- 
mindedness in their characters, which on different occa- 
sions drew forth our Lord's reproof. But yet he calls 
them " clean," because, as he said to them, that very 
same evening, " Ye are they who have continued with 
me in my temptations." They were men, who, when 
many others had gone back and walked no more with 
him, and when they themselves did not understand 
aright those words of their Lord which had given so 
much offence, yet replied to him, when he asked 
them, " Will ye also go away ?" " Lord, to whom 
shall we go ? — thou hast the words of eternal life. 
And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, 
the Son of the living God." He calls them '' clean," 
therefore, because their faith in him had not failed ; 
but they had continued with him in all his temptations, 
and loved him better than any other service. 

If this is the case, then, we may think, at first 
sight, that we too are all clean, because our faith in 
Christ has never failed us, and we have continued in 
his service ever since we were born. And so, in- 
deed, we might think justly, if our notions of faith 
were the same as those of the Scripture. True it is. 



158 SERMON XVIII. 

that none of us, perhaps, have ever doubted the fact 
of our Lord's resurrection ; but it is, I fear, no less 
true, that many of us have, in the scripture sense of 
the word, never believed it ; and I will go even fur- 
ther, and say, that many who have doubted the fact, 
even in the very moment of their doubting, have 
shown more of Christian faith than many who never 
doubted it at all. This sounds like a paradox ; but 
it is a plain and certain truth to those who are famil- 
iar with the Scriptures on one side, and have ever 
watched the workings of their own hearts on the 
other. Many have doubted it, like the Apostle 
Thomas in the Gospel, from their exceeding wish to 
find it true ; they believe not for very joy. Alive to 
their own sins, — alive to the utter darkness of all 
beyond the grave, without the aid of revelation, — alive 
to the surpassing wisdom and excellence of the great 
revelation of God in Christ Jesus, — it is almost too 
good to be hoped for, that, for all they most lament 
and shrink from, there should be so perfect a rem- 
edy, — ^that all, and more than all, that their fondest 
imaginations could picture, of good and excellent, 
should be a real and sober truth. Surely all those 
who know the Gospel and the nature of man, would 
pray earnestly that thousands who never have doubted 
of Christ's resurrection might doubt of it this instant, 
so that they might have with their doubt so much of a 
real Christian faith, — a heart and mind so much in 
agreement with the mind of the Spirit of God. On 
the other hand, and this is to our present purpose most 
particularly, it does not at all follow that they who do 
not doubt, therefore believe. 



SERMON XVIII. 159^ 

Taught the facts of our religion from childhood, — 
taught to consider them as very certain and very- 
sacred, but too often not taught how to use them, — the 
events of Christ's life and death have no more occupied 
their hearts and minds than the movements of the sun, 
and moon, and stars : as far as practice is concerned, 
they think of the one no more than they do of the 
other. As children, they have said their Catechism, 
as a lesson, — as boys they have gone to church, when 
at home, because it is the custom of their families, and 
when at school, because the rules of the school oblige 
them to do so. But neither the Catechism nor the 
church service have gone beyond the particular 
portion of time — I may almost say, the particular part 
and corner of the mind — ^that has been given to them. 
They have never fully entered into the system, so as 
visibly to affect the health and strength of the consti- 
tution. It is possible that, in many cases, a boy 
knows nothing of what may be called faith, till 
he begins to prepare for confirmation. But it is pos- 
sible also that even that solemn service, admirable as 
is its design, and great as are its uses, if understood 
and applied, may pass over to some unprofitably. 
They may look upon it as a sort of examination in di- 
vinity, and think that if they can answer the ques- 
tions put to them, so as to be reported fit for confirma- 
tion, in point of knowledge, they have done their 
business, and are qualified for the ceremony; and 
after it is over, they look upon it as on au examina- 
tion when past, as a thing with which they have no 
further concern. Then comes the preparation, for 
the first time, of receiving the communion of the Lord's 



160 SERMON XTOI. 

supper : and this, perhaps, is the first time that some 
have ever acquired a notion of what Christian faitk 
really is. And for this very reason, because there 
is a general feeling, that the receiving of the sacra* 
ment is different from our common religious services^ 
that it cannot be trifled with in the manner in which 
we know that we do trifle with those other services ; — 
it is, in short, because the sacrament does really 
require faith, and faith is a thing which our evil 
nature knows not and shrinks from, — that therefore we 
so often find young persons so unwilling to come to 
the Lord's table. Nay, sometimes, even if they do 
receive it they do not yet learn fully what it is to be- 
lieve. So manifold are the tricks of our self-deceiving 
hearts, that some go to the communion itself as a 
matter of form, because they think it would be marked 
in them to stay away ; and then they try to persuade 
themselves that they cannot help going, and if they 
cannot help going, then they do not profane it by 
going unworthily; — ^that it is not their own free 
choice to go, and the guilt of profaning it will not rest 
upon their heads. Strange and shocking as it seems, 
I knoiv this argument has been used where the rules 
of a school or college have required every one to at- 
tend as a matter of regulation ; — I fear it may have 
been used even where no such rule exists, and where it 
can only be supposed that an habitual absence from 
the communion, in persons of a certain age^ cannot 
fail to be remarked as strange, and as a just matter 
of regret. But so it is, that from whatever cause,-—* 
whether from wilful neglect before they went, or more 
commonly from inveterate carelessness afterwardsj — ^ 



SERMON XVIII. 161 

too many of those who do attend the communion, still 
appear to be strangers to the principle of faith. 
They cannot be said, like the Apostles, to " have 
continued with Christ in his temptations," for they 
have never known what it is to struggle against temp- 
tation for Christ's sake. They have never made it 
their deliberate choice to abide with him, let who 
would forsake him, because they were sure that he 
had "the words of eternal life." As to leaving him 
outwardly, — that is, of changing their religion, and be- 
coming heathens and Mahometans, — that is a question 
which has never come before their minds, as there is 
nothing to tempt them to do it ; but, as to leaving him 
really, that is to say, ceasing to obey him, to honour 
him, to love him, they do not cease to do these things, 
only because they have never begun to do them at all ; 
they do not turn back from Christ, only because they 
have never really followed him. However much 
then we may be called Christians, and however little 
we have ever doubted the fact of Christ's life and death, 
we cannot on that account lay claim to that true and 
lively faith which Christ saw in his eleven Apostles, 
and for which he did not hesitate to pronounce them 
to be " clean every whit." 

But what follows then ? If we are not thus clean, 
— if we have need of far more than a partial wash- 
ing, — are we in the condition of our Lord's twelfth 
disciple, of whom it is said, that he was the son of 
perdition, and that when his hand was on the table of 
Christ, it was the hand of one who was betraying his 
Master ? — God forbid ! much rather may we hope 
that it may be said of us, that we are not far from the 



162 SERMON XVIII. 

kingdom of God, even if we are not yet spiritually- 
entered into it. We are not clean, indeed, too many 
of us ; but that Gospel which is preached unto us, — 
that Gospel whose great and most solemn completion 
we this week celebrate, — holds out to you and to me, 
to every one of the children of men who need it, a 
fountain for sin and for uncleanness — a means where- 
by our sins, though scarlet, may be made as white as 
snow, and we, like the Apostles, may stand in the sight 
of God as '' clean every whit.'' The Gospel is "Christ 
crucified ;" the power of God, and the wisdom of God : 
power to root out the most hardened evils of our nature, 
— wisdom to give even to babes a knowledge beyond 
all that earthly learning could ever acquire or teach. 
" Christ crucified" is this week more especially set 
forth before us : would to God that you and I, and all 
that in name belong unto him, might so dwell with 
humble and penitent hearts upon that solemn story, 
that, when we meet in this place next Sunday, we 
might be able, with something of a fitting joy, to cele- 
brate and give thanks to " Christ risen." How often 
have we lived over this week of our Lord's passion, 
and felt no grief and no repentance : how often have 
we attended his service on Easter-day, and felt no 
joy. I speak not of the observance of these particu- 
lar days for any special sacredness in themselves ; 
one week in itself is but like another : but I speak of 
the opportunity which it offers ; I speak of the neces- 
sity, if we ever hope to see God, of feeling at some one 
time or other of our lives, what is contained in those 
few words, "Christ crucified, and Christ risen;" of 
lettins^ our minds embrace the reason whv he was 



SERMON XVIII. 163 

crucified, and for what he rose ; of learning what it 
is to b.e a sinner, and what it is to stand acquitted 
before the throne of God, forgiven and beloved. This 
is faith, — and by this, and this alone, can we ever be 
acquitted, or ever overcome the world. We may- 
have a deep knowledge of divinity, — still more may 
we have a deep knowledge of earthly things ; — we 
may have many qualities which our friends dearly 
love, many which even our enemies cannot refuse to 
honour ; — we may live in comfort, with large enjoy- 
ment of the pleasures of sense, the pleasures of under- 
standing, and the delights of affection, and our names 
may be repeated in after times, as men who did wor- 
thily in their generation to their neighbours and their 
country ; — all this may J^e ; and yet we may awake 
from our graves, when earth falls in ruin around us, 
and hear from Him, whom we must hear as a Judge, 
though we may reject him as a Saviour, that we have 
had our reward, — that in our lifetime, or at least in 
earth's lifetime, we have received our good things, 
and that the cup is now empty for ever. All will 
have passed away, as a thousand worlds, with all 
their interests and pleasures, may have passed away 
already, in infinite space and infinite time. But of 
eternal life, and of eternal happiness, there is but one 
fountain, even God : and to sinners such as we are, 
that fountain is for ever closed, unless we have access 
to it through Christ, and for his sake are regarded by 
his Father as *' clean every whit." 



SERMON XIX. 



LTJKE XVII. 36j 37, 

Two men shall he in the field ; the one shall he taken^ 
and the other left. And they answered and said 
unto him, Where, Lord ? And he said unto them, 
Wheresover the hody is, thither will the eagles he 
gathered together. 

The question here put to our Lord by his disciples, 
seems to partake somewhat of the spirit in which the 
prophecies of the Scripture are generally read, and 
by which their usefulness is very greatly lessened. 
Nor is this spirit confined to the prophecies only ; it is 
often seen in the explanations given in the parables of 
our Lord, and indeed of every other part of Scripture. 
What I mean, is the habit of making the prophecies or 
parables allude to one thing only, when in fact they 
allude to many ; the making them relate to particular 
places, persons, and nations, when, in fact, they re- 
late to particular sins, temptations, and states of mind, 
which have existed in a great many different places, 
and in many different persons and nations. Thus we 
lose the benefit of what we read in two ways ; first, 



SERMON XIX. 165 

by understanding it as speaking of past times, or of 
other persons, we keep our own lives and consciences 
out of its reach ; and secondly, we absolutely turn 
our food into poison, by using such passages as weapons 
of controversy, wherewith to triumph over others, in- 
stead of turning their edge, as we should do, to cut off 
what is evil in ourselves. 

To apply this to the words of the text. It is very 
true, that Jerusalem was the immediate occasion of 
our Lord's discourse, and its destruction was the first 
illustration of the truth of his prophecy. When he 
declared that '' in the days of the Son of Man, two 
men should be in the field ; that one should be taken, 
and the other left," it was a natural question, on the 
part of his disciples, to ask him where this should be ; 
in what country, and upon what persons, was this 
sudden and searching judgment to fall ? Let us mark 
the words of Christ's answer : " Wheresoever the 
body is, there will the eagles be gathered together." 
The words are clearly a sort of proverb ; but their 
meaning cannot be doubtful. " You ask where this 
judgment is to fall — upon what country, and on what 
people. I tell you, every where. Wherever there is 
sin and carelessness, there will be the judgment ; even 
as there are surely found birds of prey, wherever 
there is a carcase to devour. Do not then deceive 
yourselves by giving to my words a local and personal 
meaning, which would cripple their general useful- 
ness. If they applied to Jerusalem only, in less than 
forty years, when Jerusalem will be destroyed, the 
lesson they contain would be useless. But their truth 
and their force shall last for centuries after Jerusalem 



166 SERMON XIX. 

is in ruins ; and after the nation by which Jerusalem 
is to finish, has been cut off from the face of the earth 
in its turn. ' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
my words shall not pass away ;' and till heaven and 
earth do pass, there never will be a time, there never 
will be a country, there never will be an individual, 
to whom they will not be as useful and as applicable 
as to the Jews at this moment." 

Such I conceive to be the purport of our Lord's 
reply to his disciples, when he said, " Wheresoever 
the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together." 
And it is according to the lesson thus conveyed, that 
I would wish to dwell upon the words of the preceding 
verse, " Two men shall be in the field ; the one shall 
be taken, and the other left." 

I take them as applying to ourselves who are this 
day here assembled. We are " all together in the 
field," engaged in the same daily business ; living, in 
a manner, to ourselves, during the greatest part of the 
year ; and so much engaged amongst ourselves, that 
we have little time or inclination to take much part 
in what is going on elsewhere. Nay, fron) the very 
circumstances of our case, we are in a closer rela- 
tion to each other than can exist between neighbours 
in general society. The words of a former verse are 
applicable to us here : " Two men shall be in one 
bed ; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be 
left." We are not only working together in the field, 
— that is, engaged together in the same occupations 
of our busier hours, — but like the two men in one bed, 
our hours of rest, of refreshment, and amusement, are 
all shared together likewise. No connexion can be 



SERMON XIX. 167 

well closer, both in hours of work and hours of play 
and enjoyment, than that of those who are being 
brought up together at the same school. 

But mark what follows next : our Lord says, " Two 
men shall be in the field ; the one shall be taken, and 
the other left : two men shall be in one bed ; the one 
shall be taken and the other shall be left." It is even 
so, indeed. We are living closely together now ; we 
share in one another's business and pleasures ; but 
shall we be always so united ? If the veil could for 
a moment be drawn up, which hangs over the future ; 
if we could but look eight or ten years onwards, how 
infinite would be the variety of fortune experienced 
by those now here assembled, who have now so much 
in common with each other ! The one shall be taken 
and the other left. Life will wear an infinitely varied 
aspect then, to those who find it now so uniform. 
What a difference of success and failure, of pros- 
perity and adversity, of wealth and poverty, rank 
and obscurity, of joy and grief, will befal those who 
are now in circumstances so similar ! And what 
mortal eye, though ever so well acquainted with the 
present characters and fortunes of you all, could dare 
to predict your future destiny ! Who shall be taken 
and who left ; on whom misfortune will fall, and 
whom it may spare ; nothing in your present state 
can enable any man so much as to guess. Even in 
the common points of worldly fortune, there can be 
formed no sure calculation, so suddenly and so unex- 
pectedly, even in these matters, do our prospects, in a 
few years, either brighten or darken. But still less 
can we form the slightest notion of our happiness and 



168 SERMON XIX. 

misery in after life ; of what may be the state of our 
domestic relations ; what the condition of our health 
and faculties ; what the degree of respect or indiffer- 
ence with which we may be treated in the world. 
Nothing, indeed, is more striking, than, when we 
have lived ten or twenty years from the period of our 
leaving school, to consider the various fates of those 
with whom we were once living so familiarly, as far 
as it may be in our power to trace it. Above all, we 
thus gain a very lively notion of the uncertainty of 
the duration of life ; for few can look thus around, 
even in the full vigour of manhood, without perceiv- 
ing that many of those who entered on the world with 
them, and who set out from one common port, have 
even already ceased to accompany them, and are 
gone down in their first spring time to the grave. 

But our Lord's words have yet a further and more 
solemn application. " Two men shall be in the field; 
the one shall be taken, and the other left." If the 
streams of our several fortunes were but divided for a 
time, and all were to unite again, and find their way 
together into one and the self-same ocean, the sense 
of their separation would be far less awful. But, 
instead of this, we know that, in too many cases, the 
streams do but flow further and further asunder, till 
their end at last is the very extreme of distance and 
diflTerence. We know, in short, that, in the most 
solemn sense of all, one will at last be taken, and the 
other left ; one taken away into outer darkness, the 
other left as a full shock of corn on the harvest-field, 
to be gathered into the garner of his Lord. So near, 
so closely connected with each other now, — yet then, 



SERMON XIX. 169 

as far parted asunder, as to hell and heaven ! In that 
day the eagles of God will surely seek out their prey, 
and with most infallible certainty will fix on it. No 
more mixture of good and evil then ; no more of the 
wheat and tares growing together, when the tares were 
spared lest the wheat should be hurt by rooting them 
up; no more blessings undeservedly enjoyed by evil 
men, because they are in the same field together with 
the good, and the rain and the sunshine which God 
gives it must fall equally upon all those who work in 
it. But then, one shall be taken and the other left: 
the Lord has taken to him his great power, and reign- 
eth; and all that he regards in those whom he had 
suffered to live here together, is, whether they are fit 
to be transplanted together to heaven. 

Such will be the separation that will, one day or 
other, take place amongst us who are now so closely 
connected. But this last separation differs in one very 
great point from that other and nearer separation which 
I spoke of just before, when we got out to our several 
fortunes in life. Of tliat^ I said, that no human eye 
could judge, or even guess, who, amongst the congre- 
gation now here assembled, would be taken, and who 
would be left ; whose lot in life would be prosperous, 
and whose the contrary. And not only can we not 
guess, but no eflTorts of your own can be sure of suc- 
cess in this matter ; do what you will, the experience 
of all ages has proved that you cannot insure earthly 
prosperity. But, in the great separation that will take 
place hereafter, it does depend on yourselves, for I 
speak to persons already called to the privileges of 
Christ's Gospel, and with all things ready on Christ's 



170 SERMON XIX. 

part to give you the victory ; it does, I say, depend on 
yourselves, whether you shall be among those who 
are taken, or among those who are left. And not 
only so, but they who watch you narrowly, cannot 
but see that in your several characters, which is the 
see'd, however far from maturity, of eternal happiness 
or misery. True, indeed, that the seed which prom- 
ises the fairest may be blighted, withered, choked, and 
never come to the harvest : true, also, that the seed of 
the worst and most deadly plants, may, also, be timely 
smothered, or the plant, in its middle growth may be 
weeded out, and thrown away. We may. neither 
rashly or blindly trust the promise of good, nor fear- 
fully and desperately abandon to itself the promise 
of evil. Still there is the seed at this moment to be 
seen, which, if it does hold on its natural progress to 
the end, will yield the harvest of life in some, of death 
in others. And, therefore, we have deep reason to be 
thankful for every mark of early goodness : we dare 
not slight as trifling the faintest sign of early wicked- 
ness. We dare not, nor should you dare: for if you 
do slight such signs, they become every year darker 
and more fatal, and give more alarming assurance of 
a deadly issue. There are some boys whose tempers 
are weak and timid, — who yield to the persuasions of 
others, — who dislike trouble and fear danger. But 
the Christian's spirit is not the spirit of fear, nor the 
spirit of softness; but the spirit of power, and of hardi- 
ness, and of love, and of a sound mind. And such 
tempers, if they are not often guilty of violence or 
cruelty, are very apt to sink into sensual lusts, mean- 
ness, and fraud, and all the baseness of luxurious 



SERMON XIX. 171 

selfishness: for it is not without reason that St. Paul 
puts the sins of uncleanness, and of covetousness or 
selfish greediness, so close together ; both very com- 
monly belong to the same character. Others again 
are bold and overbearing, — insolent and oppressive, — 
tyrants to all within their power, — and offensive to 
their equals and superiors. This character, too, so 
totally opposite as it is to Christian charity, hardens 
more and more with the hardening influences of the 
world, — ^till it becomes, like the way-side in the para- 
ble of the sower, so hard that the seed of eternal life 
makes not a moment's impression on it. It is most 
common to see it retained through life, — to see those, 
who were known at school as cruel and oppressive, 
go on in life equally hard and unprincipled at the bot- 
tom, however much the mere forms of society oblige 
them to cloak it under a manner of outward decency 
and courteousness. Others again, and these by far 
the more numerous body, are with no such decided 
symptoms of evil, — neither cowardly and weak, nor 
cruel and oppressive, with no more alarming sign than 
a general thoughtlessness, and a fondness for what 
they like to do rathei' than for what they ought. With 
no more alarming sign, it is true ; but is not this alone 
alarming enough? If it be not, what becomes of 
Christ's words, that unless a man deny himself, and 
take up his cross daily, he cannot be his disciple '? He 
means, that a man, to be a Christian, must be living 
upon principle, and not according to his humour : that 
they who are called good-natured, are often good- 
natured by fits and starts, or by halves : they are so in 
some instances, — that is, they will do a kind thing to 



172 SERMON XIX. 

please their companions, but they do not care if they 
give their parents pain by their extravagance and by 
their neglect of their proper duties ; that they are good- 
natured, in short, from constitution and fancy, not out 
of a true Christian spirit of kindness. It is true that 
thoughtlessness, merely considered in itself, is a fault 
which growing years are very likely to amend; and 
this is the reason, I believe, why older persons some- 
times view it with indifference. It is true that the 
empty house will surely be filled hereafter; but, be- 
cause it has been left so long empty, it is the evil 
spirits, far more than the Spirit of God, that are likely 
to become its inhabitants. I use the language of that 
beautiful parable which was read in the Gospel of this 
morning, and which so strongly enforces the truth, 
that idleness and carelessness, although they are very 
likely to be themselves removed, are likely also to be 
only changed for other and worse evils, instead of for 
good. In fact, in other words, he who is idle in youth, 
because that is the natural fault of youth, is likely to be 
worldly-minded in after life, because that is the natural 
fault of manhood. And, therefore, I regard careless- 
ness as an evil and alarming symptom, because it is a 
proof, that in the heart left so empty, the Spirit of God 
cannot be abiding; and where he is not, it is but a 
choice between varieties of evil. Finally, there are 
some in whom the Spirit's work, though faint, is al- 
ready visible, — who are walking, however imperfect- 
ly, in the faith and fear of God. This, too, is a seed, 
which has its proper fruit, and that fruit is life eter- 
nal. But let the sight of the natural world, at this 
very season, remind those in whom this seed exists, 



SERMON XIX. 173 

how much they must do to foster it. Those buds 
which are now swelling upon every tree, may be, and 
too many of them will be, cut off by frosts or storms, 
and their promise will end in nothing. Be ye, there- 
fore, careful and watchful, remembering, that although 
you have in you the seed of good, yet perpetual prayer 
and labour are required to preserve it unharmed until 
the harvest. 



SERMON XX. 



1 PET. IV. 11. 

If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God ; 
if any man minister, let him do it as of the ahility 
which God giveth : that God in all things may he 
glorified through Jesus Christ, 

The same sentiment is expressed by St. Paul, where 
he says, " Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye 
do, do all to the glory of God.'' It is, indeed, one of 
the very foundation stones of revelation, that God 
should, in our actions, be all in all ; as it is the great 
guilt of those who know, and do not, that, " knowing 
God, they yet glorify him not as God, neither are 
thankful." St. Peter, it is true, is speaking in the 
text particularly, of certain offices in the early Chris- 
tian church. The offices were various, and so were 
the gifts required to fulfil them properly ; but all these 
were wrought by one and the self-same Spirit ; — 
whether it were the gift of speaking or of preaching, 
which was required to do the office of an apostle or 
prophet ; or the gift of an active and cheerful spirit, 
which was needed for the office of minister or dea- 



SERMON XX. 175 

con, whose principal business was to provide for the 
bodily wants of the poor. But it is clear that the 
meaning of St. Peter's words applies to all offices and 
all callings whatever, and to all the various gifts by 
which God enables us to discharge their several du- 
ties. If any man speak, if any man minister, if any 
man labour with his hands, or if any one work with 
his understanding ; — whether our business be active 
or quiet; — whether we are engaged in the actual 
duties of life, or in the preparation for them ; — still 
we should labour, as by the ability which God giveth ; 
and we should strive in all things to glorify God, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

I proceed, then, to apply this general rule to those 
cases in which we ourselves, who are now here 
assembled, most require it. And I will follow a divi- 
sion analogous to that of the Apostle. I will first 
speak of our labours of the understanding ; next, of 
our labours of charity ; and, lastly, of all our more 
general conduct, which may not properly fall under 
either of the two former heads. In all these, we are 
worse than nothing, unless we glorify God through 
Jesus Christ. 

First, then, of our labours of the understanding. 
" If any man speak,'' says St. Peter, " let him speak 
as the oracles of God." May I say, ^^ If any man 
read, let him read as if his book were God's work;" 
or, " as if he were God's scholar ?" To read is, with 
most of us, our particular appoii^ited business ; we 
spend, or ought to spend, a great deal of time in it : 
but what shall we do, if during this large portion of 
our time, God is far away from us ? If God is not 



176 SERMON XX. 

in our reading, considering how much of our day be 
spent in it, is it not somewhat like living without God 
in the world ? Yet it is not possible that all, or the 
greatest part of our reading, should be strictly about 
God. We read the books of the Heathen, who did 
not know him ; we read also many books of those who 
did know him, but whose works, unhappily, give no 
sign that they did so. We read books of science, or 
books of entertainment, where we cannot expect the 
name of God to find a place. How, then, can we 
read all these as if we were God's scholars ? how, in 
dwelling upon subjects so little seemingly connected 
with him, can we be glorifying God through Jesus 
Christ ? It seems that the question is not an easy one, 
since it has been found so difficult, in practice at least, 
to answer it. We see that they who profess to glo- 
rify God in all their lives, do it, not by reading all 
things as God's scholars; but by giving up many 
kinds of reading altogether. We see, on the other 
hand, that they whose knowledge is the deepest, and 
whose understandings are the most highly cultivated, 
too often have, amidst all their knowledge, retained no 
place for God ; that neither with their lips, nor in 
their lives, do they glorify him. It is too common a 
case to excite our wonder that knowledge is not always 
followed by goodness ; and we know that without 
goodness God cannot be glorified. It seems, then, a 
very difficult thing to read on a great variety of sub-*f 
jects, and yet read as God's scholars: difficult, as 
most Christian graces are difficult ; but not, surely, 
impossible, if we follow the right way of effecting it. 
Now we cannot read all things as God's scholars, if 



SERMON XX. 177 

we have never been his scholars at all ; we cannot 
find him, or see him, by faith, in every place, if we 
have never learnt to know his voice where it speaks 
in its own proper tones to us. In other words, we 
cannot make a Christian use of other books, if the 
book of God itself be not familiar to us. Nor, again, 
can we possibly turn common things into our spiritual 
food : we shall not easily be led to think of the highest 
things by the study of books on worldly matters, if, 
even when the occasion directly calls for it, our 
thoughts are still slow to travel heavenward, I can 
conceive a man praying in church, or in his own 
house, at certain stated times of prayer, and yet 
never thinking of God when he is reading a his- 
tory or a poem : — but it is absolutely impossible that 
such books should make him think of God, if he does 
not think of him at other times ; — if his prayers be 
omitted or said carelessly, it is out of the question that 
he should feel any thing like a devotional spirit when 
reading the histories, poems, or orations, of a heathen. 
And, therefore, if we would learn to read every thing 
as God's scholars, we must at least read the Bible as 
such, — I mean with a sincere desire to practise it. I 
am quite sure, that even if the lessons read every 
Sunday in the church service were but carefully at- 
tended to, there could not be so much ignorance of 
the Scriptures as we now meet with. Coming over 
again, as these lessons do, year after year, it would 
seem no difficult matter to remember them ; and al- 
though they form only a small part of the whole Bible, 
yet even these, if thoroughly known, would be of very 
great service to us. Indeed, if they were well known, 

8 



178 SERMON XX. 

we may be pretty sure that more of the Bible would 
be known also : — it is not natural that what we really 
know should excite in us no interest or curiosity to 
know more. But, if we do once get a knowledge of 
the Bible, — by which I mean not a knowledge of the 
mere history and antiquities of the Jews, but of the 
principles of life which the Bible teaches ; — and, 
above all, that great principle which runs through it 
from beginning to end, that God should be all in all 
to us in our lives, — then we learn to get that true 
view of the world and all things in it, which will in a 
manner perforce present itself to our minds whenever 
a false view is laid before us. If this be rooted and 
implanted in us, any thing opposite to it will no more 
fail to bring it vividly before us, than any thing that 
is agreeable to it : — nay, I know not that the very 
contrast does not serve to set it off; and whether the 
Christian ever feels more keenly awake to the purity 
of the spirit of the Gospel, than when he reads the 
history of crimes and follies related with no true sense 
of their evil ; — or, when in the deepest strains of pas- 
sionate poetry, all the miseries and all the joys of life 
are touched upon, save that only misery of sin, which 
he knows to be alone incurable, — save that only joy 
of a heart at peace with God, which he knows to be 
alone eternal. 

We may read all things then, and yet read all as 
God's scholars ; drawing even from the writings of 
those who thought but of evil, or at least were utterly 
careless of God, a food for holy and spiritual princi- 
ples to be nourished with. And then we see the 
force of Christ's words, when he said, that " every 



SERMON XX. 179 

scribe, instructed to the kingdom of heaven, is like 
unto an householder, who bringeth forth out of his 
treasure things new and old." The extent and vari- 
ety of our knowledge, the command of things new and 
old, of things sacred and things profane, does, indeed, 
instruct us with tenfold power for the service of the 
kingdom of God. But if acquired without that know- 
ledge and love of God which can make it minister to 
his service, then, indeed, it does any thing but instruct 
us to the kingdom of heaven ; the exercise of our un- 
derstanding, if made in such a case our principal em- 
ployment, is one of the surest and speediest poisons to 
our souls ; there is no evil spirit who may not find 
room for himself easily in that heart, which is occu- 
pied only by the gay and yet dead furniture of intel- 
lectual knowledge. 

I have spoken more at length upon this point, be- 
cause it concerns what is our peculiar business here. 
Yet the next point is no less worthy of our notice — 
our labours of charity, or our acts of kindness to our 
neighbours. '^ If any man minister, let him do it as 
of the ability that God giveth.'^ If w^e give but a cup 
of cold water to one of the humblest of our brethren, 
let it be done for Christ's sake. Perhaps the need of 
our remembering this is greater than we are apt to 
imagine. There is something so delightful in kind- 
ness, so natural in the wish to please and to relieve, 
— so exceedingly sweet in the consciousness of having 
done good to others, and in receiving the return of 
their grateful love, — that I am afraid our charity is 
very often unsanctified ; we think of our suffering 
brethren only, without remembering who it is that 



180 SERMON XX. 

puts himself forward in their persons to receive our 
love, and if we will but see him, to take in their behalf 
the office of overpaying all that we can do to them. 
We see not Christ in those who need our charity ; we 
see not God in our own ability to relieve them. For 
what have we that we have not received ; and that 
which we gave them, are we the owners of it in truth, 
or only the stewards of God's bounty ? I speak of 
charity, and of relieving the poor ; but it applies no 
less to every kindness, to whomsoever bestow^ed. Good- 
nature, and all the various w ays which we have of 
obliging one another where there is no need of alms, 
are naturally highly popular, and, to most minds, 
carry their own reward with them. But here, too, 
we give or we show kindness, without thinking of 
God, and the consequence is evil both to others and 
to ourselves. To others, because, thinking that what- 
ever kindness we show^, we had a right in a manner 
not to show, we soon become satisfied with what we 
do, and even allow ourselves sometimes to look upon 
it as a compensation for ill-humour, neglect, or even 
positive unkindness and insult. To ourselves, because, 
forgetting our Master, and what he has done for us, 
and what he requires of us, we compare ourselves 
only with ourselves, and are then soon contented with 
our progress. A little thing becomes magnified, when 
the scale is so minute ; and we are pleased with our- 
selves for our good and amiable qualities, when, had 
we tried our hearts by Christ's law, we should have 
seen how little room there was for self-satisfaction, 
and how much more there was in them of selfishness 
than of love. 



SEKMON XX. IQl 

So again, in all those parts of our conduct which do 
not come under either of these two heads, there is no 
real goodness, there is even no safety from condem- 
nation, unless we glorify God through Jesus Christ. 
With regard to the employment of our time, the exer- 
cise of our bodily faculties, the government of our 
tongues, how soon shall we be satisfied, and into how 
much of real sin shall we continually be falling, if 
we do not, in all these matters, remember that we Lre 
but stewards of God's manifold bounties ; that our 
time, our bodies, and the wonderful faculty of speech 
were all only lent us to improve them ; lent us to 
glorify him who gave them. And to glorify him in 
Jesus Christ, for the Father and the Son may never 
be separated ; and we can neither know nor glorify 
nor in anywise please the Father, but only throuah 
his Son Jesus Christ. That is, that all our thoughte, 
and all our actions, are unworthy of God's acceptance; 
that they can be accepted by him only in his beloved 
Son. He in our place and we in his : that as he took 
upon him the infirmities of our nature, we might be 
clothed with the perfections of his ; and as he died 
because we were sinners, so we might be loved, and 
receive eternal life, because he is righteous. 



SERMON XXI. 



MARK VI. 31. 

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into 
a desert place, and rest a while : for there were many 
coming and going, arid they had no leisure so much 
as to eat. 

There are a great many considerations which this 
single passage may give birth to ; but two in particu- 
lar may be made most applicable to our present cir- 
cumstances. The one is, the example of earnest and 
unabated labour afforded by Christ and his Apostles : 
"they had no leisure so much as to eat;" and the 
other, the spirit and meaning of his words, " Come ye by 
yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." 
Both these points seem capable of yielding much that 
is useful to all of us who are now here assembled. 

We are accustomed to think of our Lord as fur- 
nishing us with an example of many things ; but not 
particularly of energy and constant exertion. We 
think of his devotion to God, his benevolence, his 
meekness, his patience, and of many others of the 
perfections of his character ; but we do not perhaps 



SERMON XXI. 183 

observe, that he affords to us a no less perfect pattern of 
those excellences which St. Paul has so well described 
in one single verse, when he tells the Roman Chris- 
tians to be " not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, 
serving the Lord." In this, as in other things, " Christ 
pleased not himself;" but was content to give up his 
whole time and all his faculties to the service of God. 
'^ They had no leisure so much as to eat." 

These last words are well illustrated by another 
passage in the Gospel of St. John, where it says, that 
his disciples left Jesus by the side of a well, in Sa- 
maria, while they themselves went to the neighbouring 
town to buy food. Whilst they were absent, a woman 
of Samaria came to the well, and our Lord was en- 
gaged in speaking with her, and with the men of the 
town, whom her report of him brought to see him. At 
last his disciples came back and brought the food, and 
begged him to eat. But even then his answer was, 
that he had meat to eat which they knew not of ; and 
this meat, he said, was to do the will of him that sent 
him, and to finish his work. 

It appears then, that what hindered our Lord from 
having leisure so much as to eat, was the intense in- 
terest which he felt in doing his Father's work. His 
was not a bondman's service, giving to the task he 
hates the least possible share of his time and strength ; 
it was indeed the zealous service of a son, who came 
not to do his own will, but the will of the Father who 
sent him. What a lesson is this for all of us, — I 
speak not only of the younger ones amongst us, but 
• of us all ; what a lesson to us, when we are so eager, 
if I may so speak, to change the stones into bread, to 



184 SEKMON XX2- 

indulge our natures with refreshment and ease ; and 
when our work, even in the best of us, is too often, if 
not in a bondman's, at least in a hireling's spirit ; if 
we do not dislike it, we yet are apt to be too much 
satisfied with ourselves for doing it, and to look upon 
it too fondly as giving us a claim to so much reward* 
But it is well too to consider the nature of our Lord's 
work. " There were many coming and going." His 
Work was not silent and solitary study ; it was not the 
labour of his hands in some one regular business, m 
which, though the hands are employed, the mind may 
be at rest, and the man may go to rest at night with 
only that sort of weariness which makes sleep the 
wholesomer and the sweeter, Christ's was not the 
labour of mind only, nor the labour of body only ; 
but both together. It was the kind of labour which 
is indeed the very best for the spiritual health of us 
all, but which is to our bodies and our minds perhaps 
the most fatiguing : I mean, constant personal inter- 
course with others, in the endeavour to do good to their 
bodies and their souls. Our Lord was hardly ever 
alone, nor was he, though in a crowd, yet in a crowd 
with which he had no concern, so that he might still 
follow his own thoughts and his own business ; but his 
thoughts were of them, — his business was to do them 
good. Nor was it a multitude of the same persons, 
but one continually changing : " There were many 
coming and going." This may seem a little thing to 
notice ; but I believe, with regard to the increase of 
excitement and consequent exhaustion which it occa- 
sions, it is by no means trifling. The very constant 
sight of new faces, — ^the mere confusion of the per- 



SERMON XXI. 185 

petual moving to and fro, — -the being obliged so often 
to repeat the same things to a succession of different 
persons, and not having any of them long enough our 
hearers to have acquired for them, or inspired in them 
towards us, a particular personal knowledge and re- 
gard, — all these are things which serve to make ex- 
ertion felt more deeply. But this w^as the course of*- 
life that our Lord chose ; and his fervent love towards 
God and man made him follow it so heartily, that he 
would not allow himself leisure so much as to eat. 

Yet with ail this constant activity in doing good, let 
us hear the words of the text that follow : "- Come ye 
yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." 
We know, from other places in the Gospels, of w^hat 
sort of rest our Lord was here speaking, and how he 
employed these hours of retirement and solitude. No 
doubt, partaking as he did of the bodily infirmities of 
our nature, he required rest, literally and in the sim- 
plest sense of the word, — and no doubt also that such 
periods of rest and entire refreshment are not only 
allowable but useful, and even necessary. Yet Christ 
shows us how we may refresh our bodies and minds 
without letting our souls suffer ; how w^e may return 
from such retirement, strengthened alike in body and 
in soul for the work that is set before us. These 
times, which our Lord passed in a desert place, gen- 
erally, that is, among the mountains that rise at some 
little distance from the shores of the sea of. Galilee, 
were his favourite times of prayer and meditation. 
For this, even the work of daily charity was suspend- 
ded ; inasmuch as he knew, that to man's nature even 
the work of charity itself became hurtful, if the spirit 
8* 



186 SERMON XXJ. 

of faith and love to God were suffered to flag ; and 
that to be continually doing, however good may be the 
works, has a tendency to make us too much satisfied 
with them and with ourselves. It is only God who 
worketh hitherto without cessation, whose providence 
for the works of his hands never slumbers. And 
when our Lord defended his own healing a man on 
the Sabbath day by the example of his Father, to 
whom all days are alike, — (" for he who keepeth Israel 
will neither slumber nor sleep,") the Jews rightly un- 
derstood, that he was thereby making himself equal 
with God. But he who, as God, worked and does 
work for ever, yet as man, and for our example, thought 
it right to vary his active labours with intervals of 
religious rest. 

Here then, in these three parts of the text, — in the 
zeal with which our Lord pursued his work, — in the 
particular nature of it, — and in the rest with which he 
thought fit from time to time to vary it, and to refresh 
himself for it, — there is matter of special improve- 
ment for three different classes of persons, such as in 
the three temptations which befell him at the beginning 
of his ministry. The zeal with which he pursued his 
work, so that they had no leisure so much as to eat, is 
an example for that most numerous class who are 
merely following their pleasure, or who, if obliged to 
work, yet work unwillingly and grudgingly. The 
particular nature of Christ's work is an example and 
a warning for those who, like the ground choked with 
thorns, are working indeed, and working zealously ; 
but whose work is never of that sort as Christ's : it is 
worldly in its beginning, and worldly also in its end. 



SERMON XXI. 187 

And in the rest which Christ took from time to time, 
and the uses which he made of it, even they who are 
actually labouring in his service, may learn how alone 
their labour may be blessed to themselves as well as to 
others ; how their work may indeed be such as that, 
when they fail in this world, they may be received into 
the everlasting habitations of God. 

In all considerations of this kind, it is of the last 
importance that we all see clearly the particular class 
of men to which we ourselves belong, and apply to 
ourselves that particular lesson which is intended for 
us. A Pharisee might have received more harm than 
good by listening to our Lord's reproaches of the false 
doctrines of the Sadducees ; a publican, in the same 
manner, might have been injured by dwelling upon 
what Christ said of the pride and hypocrisy of the 
Pharisees. The condemnation of faults not our own, 
is easy ; but it is, at the same time, worse than unprofit- 
able. Thus irreligious persons delight in all those 
passages of Scripture which speak of the w^orthless- 
ness of saying, " Lord, Lord," unless we do his will ; 
they are rejoicing that they are not hypocrites, forget- 
ting that they are all the while something even worse. 
Their concern is not with the deceit of Jacob, but with 
the profaneness of Esau. And, it should be remem- 
bered also, that the very worst cases of brute wicked- 
ness are, for this very reason, not so much mentioned 
in Scripture, as other less shocking offences, because 
God's word needed not to dwell upon what mere natu- 
ral reason and conscience taught us to regard with 
abhorrence. Atrocious cruelty, utter hardness and 
brutality of feeling, and a want of natural affec- 



188 SERMON XXU 

tion to our relations, are things which are not so much 
human vices, as monstrosities : God's revealed will is 
intended to carry us on further than we could have 
gone by our mere natural knowledge of him, not to 
repeat over again what we must be — ^more like beasts 
than men if we do not know already. Christians do 
not need to be enjoined what even common sinners 
are not so vile as to leave undone, nor to bo warned 
against sins which even publicans and sinners would 
shrink from. " Sinners, also, love those that love 
them ; — sinners, also, lend to sinners, that they may 
receive as much again." 

To apply this to the presart case : — ^those among 
us who have no zeal for any kind of useful labour ; — 
who hardly exercise at all, or exercise no more than 
they must, their common faculties of the understand- 
ing ; — who, so far from devoting their hearts to God, 
have not even learnt to love their own earthly rela- 
tions, but prefer their own selfish and brute enjoy- 
ments, to their own improvement or the wishes of 
their friends ; — they who care for nothing so much as 
for eating, drinking, and playing: — with these the 
two latter parts of the text have, as yet, little to do ; 
they are not advanced high enough to need them. 
The lesson which they require is the first and simplest 
part of the text : to learn diligence from Christ's ex- 
ample ; to follow their work most earnestly, and in a 
better spirit ; to think that there is something in life, 
higher and better than the enjoyments of a beast. 
Unless they get so far as this, there is no danger, in- 
deed, of the seed being parched up for want of root, 
and much less of its being choked by over luxuriant 



SERMON XXI. 189 

weeds : their hearts are but the hard wayside, too dull 
and too degraded for the seed ever to live in them at 
all. No one, in short, can ever be a Christian, if he 
is not fit to be a man. It will be time enough here- 
after to tell them of the wisdom of religious rest, even 
from Christian duties, when they have some notion of 
what Christian duty is. It will be time enough to talk 
of the danger of too much admiring their mere intel- 
lectual faculties, when they shall have first learnt to 
exert and take pleasure in them at all. Instead of 
thinking, then, that they are not guilty of intellectual 
pride, or of too highly valuing their own virtues, they 
should recollect why they are not guilty of these things, 
and that it is only because they cannot be proud of 
what they have not got, and that their own faults are 
of a much lower order ; not the pride of having con- 
quered themselves, but gross selfishness ; not loving 
man more than God, but themselves more than man ; 
not trusting too much to their understandings, but 
altogether neglecting them. For them, therefore, 
much of the Gospel is as yet a dead letter ; they must 
be far above what they are now, before they can re- 
quire to be warned against the faults of Christians ; 
they must first learn to acquire the common virtues 
and excellences of men. In short, they must be not 
far from the kingdom of God, before they can hope to 
enter into it ; they must be sensible to the laws of 
nature and reason, before they can ever understand 
those of the Gospel. 



SERMON XXIL 



MARK VI. 31. 

And Tie said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into 
a desert place, and rest a while : for there loere many 
coming and going, and they had no leisure so much 
as to eat. 

Before I go on with the subject of the text, it may 
be right to make one or two remarks, in order to pre- 
vent what I said on Sunday last from being misunder- 
stood, and that too, so misunderstood, as to render it 
mischievous rather than useful. 1 said, that it was 
very important that we should all understand clearly 
the particular class of characters to which we our- 
selves belong ; that so we may each apply to our- 
selves the particular lesson which is intended for us. 
And, to apply this to the case before us, I said, that 
they who had no zeal for any kind of labour were not 
concerned with exhortations to choose rather that sort 
of labour which is most useful, and, still less, with 
warnings not to pursue their labour too eagerly. 
Such persons, I said, had not got far enough for 
lessons of this kind ; but required first to learn from 



SERMON XXII. 191 

our Lord's example of mere diligence in his calling, 
without regard to the after question of what his par- 
ticular calling was. But, in thus speaking of classes 
of characters, I never supposed that these would 
always go along with particular ages, or particular 
situations in life. Generally speaking, no doubt, 
mere idleness is the fault of the very young ; and, 
generally speaking, they would less require the warn- 
ing against labouring in worldly things only, or 
against labouring without some intervals of religious 
rest. Yet it would be very foolish to suppose, either 
that no young boy had any need to be reminded of 
these points, or that no older person required to be 
excited to simple diligence and exertion. There are 
many cases in which the older require w hat is properly 
the instruction of the young, — many in which the 
young require to be warned against the faults of more 
advanced age, — many also, in which both will stand 
in need at once of both. It happens that one fault 
may be partly, not entirely subdued ; that we may 
be grown enough in character to be liable to new 
temptations, without being out of the reach of our old 
ones ; that, therefore, we may require to guard at 
once against the evils which beset different points of 
our progress, even if w^e need not guard against each 
in an equal degree. But of all this no man can judge 
in his neighbour ; it were well if he could always 
judge truly of it even in himself. In speaking then 
of the besetting faults of early age, I do not mean, 
either that all the young require most to be warned 
against these, or that none but the young are con- 
cerned with them ; in speaking of the besetting faults 



192 SERMON XXII. 

of a riper character, there may be young persons who 
have great need to beware of them, and there may be 
old persons who have not ; and, again, there may be 
very many, both old and young, to whom it may be 
highly useful to be cautioned against both. 

These things are of consequence every where, but 
particularly so in a congregation like the present, 
where the differences of age are so strongly marked. 
Were this not remembered, I might be thought, at one 
time, to be preaching against one part of my hearers, 
and, at another time, against another ; and the re- 
marks that I make may be supposed to be levelled at 
particular persons, rather than at particular faults 
and dangers. And those differences in our situation 
and relations to one another, which elsewhere are 
necessarily kept up, may be carried into things, and 
to places where they should be wholly lost sight of. 
For when we are here assembled, as more immediately 
in the presence of God, our relation to God and Christ 
is brought out into such clear light, and presses, or 
ought to press, so strongly upon the minds of us all, 
that our common earthly relations to each other sink, 
for the time, into insignificance. There is neither 
Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
neither male nor female ; but Christ is all and in all. 

One thing more may be added, which ought also to 
be always taken into the account, in the exercise of 
the Christian ministry. The preacher, in speaking of 
faults and temptations, should not be supposed to have 
gained his knowledge of them only from the characters 
of others ; if he be commonly honest, and commonly 
in earnest, his own heart must have afforded him some 



SERMON XXII. 193 

of his best lessons. Where indeed can we, any of us, 
learn so truly the strength of temptation, and man's 
weakness ; where can we so well have understood the 
dangers of youth, and the dangers of manhood, as by 
studying our own souls, and dwelling upon the re- 
cords of our own experience ? And if it be thought 
that we cannot dare to preach against faults of which 
we may be conscious ourselves, and that, therefore, 
we must be thinking only of our neighbours, — he who 
so judges, judges either most hardly of human weak- 
ness, or most unworthily of the Christian minister's 
office. Most hardly of human weakness, if he ex- 
pects the knowledge and consciousness of sin to be 
the same thing as the victory over it ; most unworthi- 
ly of the Christian minister's office, if he thinks, that, 
in this place, the weakest may not speak with some- 
thing of his Master's power ; and, however in himself 
insufficient, that he may not have gained ample suffi- 
ciency for Christ's sake, to speak Christ's message. 

And now 1 may resume my proper subject, and pro- 
ceed to the full consideration of the first of the three 
lessons which Christ's conduct, as described in the 
text, affords us ; — the lesson of zeal in the discharge 
of our daily duties. " For there were many coming 
and going, and they had no leisure so much as to 
eat." 

There are some dispositions, which, from absolute 
indolence, seem to be zealous about nothing whatever ; 
— persons who appear neither to care about business 
or pleasure, who cannot be roused to take an active 
interest in any thing. These are characters which 
exist, and which we must all have sometimes met 



194 SERMON XXII. 

with ; but they are not common, neither are they very 
dangerous, because the general feeling of men is apt 
to despise them as stupid and insensible. A much 
more common case is that of persons who like some 
things exceedingly, and are all alive when they hap- 
pen to be engaged in them ; but who do not like their 
common employment, and display about that no inter- 
est at all. This is a very common case, for it rarely 
happens that our employment is the very one which 
we should most choose, — or the one which we most 
choose at this particular time, or under these particu- 
lar circumstances. And yet if it be not, even al- 
though we may not dislike it in itself, we may dislike 
it in comparison with what we like better ; — and this 
for all the purposes of destroying our interest in it is 
nearly the same thing as if we disliked it in itself. 
For instance, we all know that the expectation of any 
great pleasure is apt to unsettle our minds : although 
our work may commonly interest us tolerably, yet 
now, with this prospect before us, it seems dull and 
tiresome ; — we regard it merely as a burden, and 
grudge every hour that we give to it. So then, it 
seems that we must all expect to have our work often 
disagreeable to us, and that in many cases it is al- 
ways disagreeable : — disagreeable I mean by nature, 
and speaking according to common notions. But to 
say that a man can do heartily what is disagreeable to 
him, is to talk of impossibilities ; he can no more do 
it than he can have an appetite for nauseous food : he 
will attend to what he dislikes no more than he can 
help ; and, so far from following it up so earnestly as 
to allow himself no leisure so much as to eat, he will 



SERMON XXII. 195 

be glad of every excuse, and enlarge as much as pos- 
sible upon the claims of his health, his strength, and 
his reasonable liberty, in order to abridge to the ut- 
most the time which he cannot altogether refuse, to 
what he knows to be the call of duty. 

It may be said then, that I have given the idle all 
the excuse they can desire ; for I say that no one can 
do heartily what is disagreeable to him, and they will 
maintain very truly that their daily employment is 
disagreeable to them. I know that it is so ; — but it 
does not follow that it must always remain so. True it 
is, that we cannot do heartily what we dislike ; but it 
is no less true, that we may learn if we will to like 
many things which we at present dislike : and the 
real guilt of idleness consists in its refusal to go 
through this discipline. I might speak of the well- 
known force of habit, in reconciling us to what is 
most unwelcome to us ; — that by mere perseverance 
what was at first very hard, becomes first a little less 
so, then much less so, and at last so easy, that accord- 
ing to a well-known law of our faculties, it becomes 
a pleasure to them to do it. But, although persever- 
ance will certainly do this, yet what is to make us so 
persevering ? — if we go through this discipline it will 
cure us, but what can engage us to give it a fair trial ? 
And here it is that I would bring in the power of 
Christ's example ; — here it is that the grace of God 
through Christ will give us the victory. " Christ 
pleased not himself;" — '^ Christ allowed himself no 
leisure so much as to eat.'' For what did he do this, 
and for whom ? For our salvation, and for our spirits' 
sakes, that we through his poverty might be made 



196 SERMON XXII, 

rich. And who was he who so denied himself? The 
Son of God, the heir of all things; even He by whom 
all things were created, and by whose providence 
they are sustained. Yet he would not allow himself 
fully to use them, but thought it his meat to do the 
will of Him who sent him, and to finish his work. 
And who are we who do not deny ourselves ? His 
creatures, who owe every thing to his goodness, and 
yet day by day are unworthy of it ; his creatures, 
who, with no right to so much as the crumbs under 
his table, think it hard if we cannot sit down and rest 
and enjoy, under circumstances in which he never 
rested ; — his creatures, who offending him every hour, 
are yet impatient of any thing but pleasure at his 
hands ; — who, with so much of that guilt for which 
He w^as pleased to be crucified, are yet unwilling to 
submit to that discipline, which his pure and spot- 
less soul endured cheerfully for no need of his own, 
but for our sakes. 

Alas ! this touches us all, young and old alike ; we 
may not well find fault with others in this matter ; but 
we may and must spsak of it to them as their heinous 
sin against God, from which v/ould to God that we 
were any of us wholly clear. Indeed, my brethren, 
we too early gain, we too fondly cling to the notion, 
that we come into this world to seek our happiness in 
it. Too large a portion of our fellow-creatures are 
cured of this error by necessity ; — there are too many 
who are taught by early and excessive*labour, and 
by greater suffering than ever self-denial would im- 
pose upon them, that this world is for them at least no 
place of enjoyment. Their over labour doubly shames 



I 



SERMON XXII. 197 

our over indulgence. But the truth which they can- 
not but learn, we must learn also, or we perish for 
ever. If we make this life what Christ will not have 
it be, — if where we should labour we presume to 
rest, — where we should deny ourselves, we revel in 
enjoyment, — we at once wrong our poorer brethren 
and insult Christ ; w^e laugh in fact at his view of hu- 
man life, at his constant exertion, and his self-denial ; 
— we think that w^e judge more wisely in pleasing our- 
selves, and snatching our joys while we may. If we 
are right, then indeed his example was needless ; but, 
if that example were given as our pattern, — if as he 
was, so should we be in this world ; — if he himself 
was made perfect through suffering, and entered not 
into glory without first suffering pain, — w^hat will be- 
come of us, if unpurified and unsanctified, with no 
labour of love done, with all Christ's labour and suf- 
ferings despised as thankless, we offer ourselves for 
entrance into that eternal kingdom where none but his 
redeemed can enter ? What will become of us, if, 
enjoying when we should be labouring, and thinking 
of our pleasure instead of doing his will, we were to 
hear his summons at the door ? Would he, will he, 
find us watching when he calls ; — faithful stewards 
of his gifts, each in our several station doing the w^ork 
of his house, with loins girded about and lamps burn- 
ing ? Blessed be our portion if he does ; but if other- 
wise, — if eating and drinking, injuring our fellow- 
servants, and despising him, — we know what will be 
our portion ; we know that we shall call on the rocks 
to fall on us, rather than meet his presence then. 



SERMON XXIII. 



LUKE V. 29. 



And Levi made Mm a great feast in Ms own house ; 
and there was a great company of publicans and of 
others that sat down with them . 

The text on which I have been speaking for the two 
last Sundays, describes our Lord as continually sur- 
rounded by a multitude of persons who were constantly 
coming and going, — a moving crowd, full of curiosity 
to hear a prophet of whom they had heard so much, 
and hoping, too, to see some of his wonderful miracles 
performed before them. The verse which I have now 
chosen from St. Luke shows him in nearly the same 
situation : he was a guest at a great feast, at which a 
great company of publicans and others sat down with 
him. And we see, from what immediately follows, 
of what sort of character were many of the persons 
thus assembled : because the Pharisees directly asked 
our Lord's disciples, " Why eateth your Master with 
publicans and sinners ?" 

No doubt, in some respects, our Lord's peculiar 
character as a prophet makes his example somewhat 



SERMON XXIII. 199 

different from the case of common persons. He is 
not mentioned as doing many things which we, in the 
mere discharge of our common duties, not only may, 
but must do. We cannot, nor ought we, in a literal 
sense, to go about doing good ; we have our own homes, 
and our own settled callings ; and it would be only 
producing wild confusion, if we were all to think of 
deserting them. Yet still our Lord's example is ap- 
plicable to us all, more or less : it teaches us what 
sort of employment is always, perhaps, so far as we 
can pursue it, the most useful to our souls ; it shows 
us, at any rate, what business there is which we can 
none of us safely neglect altogether ; for that which 
Christ did always^ Christ's servants cannot certainly 
be justified if they never do. And this business con- 
sists in mixing with others, not in the mere line of 
our trade or calling, and still less for mere purposes 
of gayety ; but the mixing with others, neither for bu- 
siness nor yet for pleasure, but, in the largest sense 
of the word, for charity. 

It will, then, be seen how many persons there are 
who have need to be reminded of this duty. They 
who really live mostly to themselves are, indeed, in 
these days very few ; and embrace only that small 
number of persons whose time is principally spent in 
study ; that is, men who are devoted to literature or 
science. But those who, while they mix with others, 
yet do it in the line of their business, or for pleasure's 
sake, include a very large portion of the world indeed. 
Statesmen, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, tradesmen, mer- 
chants, farmers, labourers, all are necessarily brought 
much into contact with their fellow-men ; there is no 



200 SERMON XXIII. 

danger of their living in loneliness. And persons of 
no profession, the young, and women of all ages, in 
the richer classes especially, — ^they, too, desire society 
for the pleasure of it ; they think it dull to live out of 
the world. Yet it is very possible that neither of 
these two large classes of people may mix with others 
in the way that Christ mixed with them ; they may 
do it for business or for pleasure, but not for charity. 
And I said that I used the word charity in its largest 
sense, meaning by it, '^ a desire to do good to others 
in body or soul ;" for it is by no means right to con- 
fine it to that narrow sense only, in which it merely 
means, '' relieving the bodily wants of the poor." 

To those then who are not inclined to be idle, — but 
who, whether from necessity or from activity of mind, 
are sure to have plenty of employment ; nay, who 
may be so much engrossed by it that it leaves them, 
as was the case with Christ, '^ no leisure so much as 
to eat," — it becomes of great consequence, not only 
that they should be as busy as Christ was, but that 
part of their business, at least, should be of the same 
kind ; not only that they should be fully employed, 
but that their employment may, in part at least, be of 
that sort, as, when they fail, may cause them to be 
received into everlasting habitations. 

A vast field of consideration here opens before us ; 
as vast, indeed, as the various situations which men 
fill in the world, and the various ways in which they 
may do works of charity. But it will be better, per- 
haps, to choose such points, out of the multitude which 
might be noticed, as seems most Hkely to suit our par- 
ticular circumstances here. 



SEEMON xxm. 201 

With us, either at this moment, or in a succeeding 
part of our lives, labour is likely to take the form of 
reading or study. Our notions of work are mostly 
connected with books : if our employment be at any 
time "SO great as to shorten our hours of food and 
rest, it will generally be the employment of our intel- 
lects. Our station in life makes this to be particularly 
our case ; and the state and tendencies of the world 
around us will make it still more so. What was 
accounted great learning some years ago, is no longer 
reckoned such ; what was in the days of our fathers 
only an ordinary and excusable ignorance, is esteemed 
as something disgraceful now. In these things, as in 
others, never was competition so active, — ^never were 
such great exertions needed to obtain success. Those 
who are in the world know this already ; and if there 
are any of you who do not know it, it is fit that you 
) should be made aware of it. Every profession, every 
institution in the country, will be strung up to a 
higher tone : examinations will be more common and 
more searching ; the qualifications for every public, 
and profitable, or honourable office, will be raised more 
and more. And th^'s will he, certainly, and no human 
power can stop it ; and I think, also, that it ought to 
be. Undoubtedly knowledge is good, and, in the gene- 
ral improvement of our faculties, I know not where 
we ought to desire to stop. I know not that our 
bodies can be too strong and active ; — I know not that 
our knowledge can be too extensive, or our perception 
of truth too clear. But, "every thing in its own 
'order." While pursuing so hard a course of study, — 
I while apt to be so engrossed with these exercises of 
9 



202 SERMON XXIII. 

the intellect,— while the leaves of the trees are grow- 
ing out into such beautiful luxuriance, — what is to 
become of the fruit? What is to become of that part 
of us which is fitted for more than earthly happiness ; 
to which Christ has offered and opened the ability to 
be for ever happy, to be loved by God, and to love him 
eternally ? There are two parts of our nature, which 
are, in a manner, the very seed of eternal life : — our 
feelings of humility and love. What will become of 
us if the strong and intense pursuit after intellectual 
excellence smother these ? We know that " know- 
ledge is power," and that the consciousness of power 
is most apt to engender pride ; nay, in all but God, it 
is pride already, if it be not tempered with the con- 
sciousness of weakness. But this sense of weakness 
is least of all present to strong minds when employed 
in study. While acutely discovering truth, or elo- 
quently enforcing it, they feel a great power within 
them ; a power which common men do not possess, 
and which, like all other rare qualities, the multitude 
who have it not themselves admire. This naturally 
feeds pride, and so stifles humility : and the same 
thing is likely to happen with charity. In reading 
we are of necessity much alone; and in reading, 
also, by the very nature of the case, the understand- 
ing, and not the affections, is exercised. To think, is 
something essentially different from to love. Thus 
we lose our sympathies with our fellow-creatures, 
and live in a little world of our own, in which self is 
ever predominant. We think of others only as re- 
joicing in our exaltation above them ; or, at best, in 
our power of enlightening them. And we may en- 



SERMON XXIII. 203 

lighten them, and may minister to their good, by 
teaching them many useful truths ; but what becomes 
of our own souls the while ? Are they growing up 
unto eternal life, increasing more and more in the fruits 
of the Spirit, in faith and love, in peace and joy ? Or, 
may not our case be like Balaam's, who, after having 
taught Balak the very sum of wisdom,— when he 
declared to him that man's duty " was to do justice 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his 
God," — yet himself lived in sin; and though he had 
prayed that his latter end might be that of the right- 
eous, yet it was in truth that of the wicked : he died 
with the enemies of God. 

It is here, then, that we may derive such immense 
benefit from following Christ's example, — from taking 
care to mix habitually with our fellow-creatures, not 
only for our business or our pleasure, but for charity. 
No good is done or can be done, when, from his solitary 
reading, a man only comes forth for a while into what 
is called brilliant or agreeable society ; or into that 

which deserves only a lower and a fouler name the 

society of sensuality and riot. In the first case, the 
same evil spirits of pride and selfishness which had 
been with him in his lonely chamber, again haunt the 
man in the halls of gayety ; in the other case, the spirit 
of pride is but relieved for a time by the spirit of 
drunkenness or uncleanness. This is not the inter- 
course with our fellow-creatures which is to do us 
good: this is not to follow Christ's example. We 
dare not, in this case, trust ourselves in the society of 
publicans and sinners : we should not do good to them, 
but they would rather infect us with their own evil. 



204 SERMON XXIII. 

But the natural remedy for our peculiar dangers, the 
way in which we can best mix with our brethren for 
the nourishing of our affections, is to be found in the 
intercourse with our own families on the one hand, and 
with the poor on the other. I cannot but think that in 
the former of these points, a most evil habit has of 
late years grown up amongst young men when en- 
gaged in reading ; I mean, that of going away from 
their homes, and fixing themselves, for three or four 
months, in some remote part of the country, where 
they may study without interruption. It may be, that 
more is thus read than would be read at home, though 
scarcely more than might be ; but, even supposing it 
to be so, it is a dangerous price that is paid for it. 
The simple quiet of a common family circle, the innu- 
merable occasions of kindness that it affords, and its 
strong tendency to draw away our thoughts from self, 
and to awaken our affections for others,— a discipline 
precious at every period of life,— can then least of all 
be spared, when the hardnesses of the world are just 
coming upon us, when our studies, and even our very 
animal spirits, are all combining to make us selfish 
and proud. Nay, at such a time, and to persons 
whose minds are strongly occupied with the excite- 
ment of reading, the mere commonplace society which 
most men meet with in the neighbourhood of their own 
homes, is capable of becoming highly useful. When 
the Psalmist said that he did not occupy himself with 
great matters which were too hard for him, but that 
he refrained his soul and kept it low, he expressed 
most wisely his sense of the fact, that we must not feed 
our minds always with great and high thoughts, but 



SERMON XXIII. 205 

that the common trifling interests and conversation of 
every-day society are, in their turn, a most whole- 
some variety. I have often thought that what is some- 
times charged as a defect on such society, — that it 
dwells too much upon personal and individual topics, 
upon the conduct and affairs of those immediately 
around us, — is capable of becoming most useful to 
him who regrets his own want of interest in the com- 
mon matters of life, and with whom himself and his 
own pursuits and labours occupy too large a share of 
his attention. 

But, besides this wholesome intercourse with our 
own families, another way of mixing with our breth- 
ren, in a manner most especially pleasing to Christ 
and useful to ourselves, is by holding frequent inter- 
course with the poor. Perhaps, to young men of the 
richer classes, there is nothing which makes their 
frequent residence in large towns so mischievous to 
them, as the difficulties which they find in the 
way of this intercourse. In the country, many a 
young man knows something, at least, of his poorer 
neighbours ; but, in towns, the numbers of the poor, 
and the absence of any special connexion between 
him and any of them in particular, hinder him, too 
often, from knowing any thing of them at all : an 
evil as much to be regretted on the one side as the 
other ; and which is quite as mischievous to the minds 
and tempers of the rich, as it is to the bodily condition 
of the poor. 

I can imagine hardly any thing more useful to 
a young man of an active and powerful mind, ad- 
vancing rapidly in knowledge, and with high distinction 



206 SERMON XXJII. 

either actually obtained or close in prospect, than to 
take him — or, much better, that he should go of him- 
self—to the abodes of poverty, and sickness, and old 
age. Every thing there is a lesson ; in every thing 
Christ speaks, and the Spirit of Christ is ready to con- 
vey to his heart all that he witnesses. Accustomed 
to all the comforts of life, and hardly ever thinking 
what it would be to want them, he sees poverty and 
all its evils ; scanty room, and, too often, scanty fuel, 
scanty clothing, and scanty food. Instead of the 
quiet and neatness of his own chamber, he finds, very 
often, a noise and a confusion which would render 
deep thought impossible ; instead of the stores of 
knowledge with which his own study is filled, he finds, 
perhaps, only a Prayer-book and a Bible. Then let 
him see, — and it is no fancied picture, for he will see 
it often, if he looks for it, — how Christ is to them that 
serve him, wisdom at once, and sanctification, and 
blessing. He will find, amidst all this poverty, in 
those narrow, close, and crowded rooms, — amidst 
noise and disorder, and, sometimes, want of cleanli- 
ness also, — he will see old age, and sickness, and 
labour, borne not only with patience, but with thank- 
fulness, through the aid of that Bible, and the grace 
of that Holy Spirit who is its author. He will find 
that while Ms language and studies would be utterly 
unintelligible to the ears of those whom he is visiting, 
yet that they, in their turn, have a language and feel- 
ings to which he is no less a stranger. And he may 
think too, — and, if he does, he may for ever bless the 
hour that took him there, — that, in fifty years or less, 
Ms studies and all concerned with them will have 



SERMON XXIII. 207 

perished for ever, whilst their language and their feel- 
ings, only perfected in the putting off their mortal 
bodies, will be those of all glorified and all wise spirits, 
in the presence of God and of Christ. 

No/ is this most profitable duty of visiting the poor, 
as I have said on former occasions, one which you 
can only practise hereafter, and which does not con- 
cern you here. Those who really think of their own 
souls, and who are desirous of improving them, would 
find that even here it is by no means impossible. It 
would indeed be a blessed thing, and would make 
this place really a seminary of true religion and use- 
ful learning, if those among us who are of more 
thoughtful years, and especially those who are likely 
to become ministers of Christ hereafter, would remem- 
ber that their Christian education has commenced 
already, and that he cannot learn in Christ's school 
who does not acquaint himself something with the 
poor. Two or three at first, five or six afterwards, — 
a very small number might begin a practice which, 
under proper regulation, and guided by Christian pru- 
dence, as well as actuated by Christian love, would be 
equally beneficial to the poor and to yourselves. De- 
pend upon it the time must come, and come speedily, 
when the spirit of the schools of the prophets, such as 
we read of in Israel in old times, must be revived 
amongst us here, or a worse fate than that of Jerusa- 
lem will be ours. If such were the case, if young 
men here remembered that they were preparing to 
become, some ministers of Christ, and all his servants 
— and if, therefore, they would begin even here, to prac- 
tise Christ's lessons, and to follow Christ's example, — I 



208 SERMON xxni* 

should not dread, but fully rejoice in the highest ex- 
ertion of their intellectual powers ; and a blessing, 
both on themselves and others, would come upon that 
pursuit of truth which did not exclude humility, and 
ministered to the purposes of charity^ and to the ser« 
viae of Christ* 



SERMON XXIV. 



1 PETER V. 6, 7. 

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of 
God, that he may exalt you in due time : casting all 
your care upon him ; for he carethfor you. 

We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that it became 
Him, for whom and by whom are all things, in bring- 
ing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of our 
salvation perfect through sufferings. And again it is 
said of Christ, that because " he became obedient unto 
death, even the death of the cross, that, therefore, God 
also has highly exalted him, and has given him a name 
which is above every name . " So also when James and 
John besought him, that they might sit, the one on his 
right hand, the other on his left, in his kingdom, his 
answer was, " Can ye drink of the cup that I drink 
of, and be baptized with the baptism which I am bap- 
tized with ?" — meaning, that if they would be like 
him in his glory, they must first be like him in his 
sufferings ; that they must, in short, " through much 
tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." Now 
all these passages agree with the text in this, that they 
9* 



210 SERMON XXIV. 

all speak of good things coming after trouble : they 
do not allow us to suppose that our course from our 
birth to eternity is to run all smooth. And though 
all these passages naturally receive a deeper colour- 
ing from outward circumstances ; — that is, though 
the persecution which daily beset the first Christians, 
and the general calamities which befell the whole 
Christian world at the downfall of the Roman empire, 
would make men, living at those particular times, feel 
the truth of these passages more keenly ; — yet they 
serve no less for seasons of calm than of storm ; they 
should remind us in what manner we ought to look 
upon life beforehand, without being forced to do so, 
whether we will or no, by the pressure of outward 
misery. 

I dwelt last Sunday upon imitating Christ, so far as 
it was possible, in the particular sort of employment 
which he chose, — namely, in the mixing with other 
men, neither for business only, that is, in the way of 
our calling, — nor yet for pleasure only, that is, in 
common society,- — but for charity in its largest sense, 
that is, from a desire to do good to the bodies or souls of 
others. And now, taking the words of my present 
text, I will show how this Christ-like employment is 
most suited to our state on earth, as one of humilia- 
tion, leading hereafter to glory ; and how it specially 
helps us to make that state happy, by enabling us to 
rid it of its carefulness, by casting all our care upon 
God, for Fie careth for us. 

Half, and more than half, of the practical faults in 
the world, arise from looking upon life in a false view, 
and expecting from it what God does not mean us to 



SERMON XXIV. 211 

find in it. It may be that many persons, when read- 
ing attentively our Lord's life, and studying his lan- 
guage, are greatly surprised at the absolute unworld- 
liness of both of them. Little stress is laid upon com- 
mon industry, or upon our duties to society, whether 
on a smaller scale or politically. Little or nothing is 
said of the pursuit of knowledge, or the benefit which 
mankind derive from a cultivation of the arts and sci- 
ences. Nay, in those well-known expressions in the 
Sermon on the Mount, telling us to take no thought 
for the morrow what we shall eat, or what we shall 
drink, or wherewithal we shall be clothed, I doubt not 
but that many readers, if they would own the truth, 
are rather offended at his words, and are somewhat 
inclined to say, with the Jews of old, '' This is a hard 
saying; who can hear it?" But He to whom all 
things future are as present, suited both his life and 
his words to what he knew would be ever the chief 
error of mankind. He knew that social and civil 
activity were suflniciently natural to man to need no 
encouragement : he knew that knowledge would be 
pursued, and arts and sciences cultivated. But he 
knew that the kingdom of God and his righteousness 
would not be sought after ; he knew that men would 
look carefully enough on the things of this life, but 
would care for little beyond it. And, coming as he 
did to bring immortality to light, and to open the king- 
dom of heaven, he dwelt strongly upon the wholly 
different complexion which the opening of this prospect 
threw upon our earthly life, and how it changed it 
at once from a thing complete in itself, to a mere and 
most insignificant beginning of eternity ] how it made 



212 SERMON XXIV. 

that so valuable which could help us forward to our 
real and eternal life, and that so trifling, when received 
in faith, which can but give joy and sorrow for a 
moment. 

For ourselves then, and for our children, life is 
before us as a trial-time of uncertain length, but short 
at the longest, in which we may fit ourselves, if we 
will, for an eternal life beyond it. This is life to each 
of us, and this is our proper business ; all the rest 
that we do, or can do, however splendid, however 
useful, is, or should be, done only subordinately. We 
may be thankful to God when he makes our training 
for eternity consist in the doing great and useful ac- 
tions, in bringing forth much fruit ; but we, each of 
us, are doing our business as thoroughly, are answer- 
ing as completely the purposes for which we were 
sent into the world, if we are laid for years of our 
life upon a bed of sickness, incapable of any further 
action than that of glorifying God, and perfecting our 
own souls, by patient love. The welfare of nations, 
the improvement of the world on a large scale, are, if 
I may use such an expression, God's object and God's 
business ; and thankful and happy we may be when, 
by the particular call of his providence, he chooses us 
to be his honoured instruments in accomplishing his 
vi^ork. But yet we should rejoice with trembling, 
lest while thus engaged in what I have ventured to 
call God's peculiar work, we may chance to neglect 
our own ; while preaching or ministering to, or enlight- 
ening, or governing others, we ourselves should be 
castaways. It is not, therefore, true, that our great 
business or object in the world is to do ^\\ the good 



SERMON XXIV. 213 

we can in it : our great business and object is to do 
God's will, and so to be changed through his Spirit 
into his image, that we may be fit to live with him 
for ever. His will is declared to us by the course of 
his providence, putting us into different situations of 
life where different duties are required of us : but 
these duties are duties because they are his will ; and 
if performed without reference to Him, — if done for 
worldly objects only, be they ever so extensive and 
beneficial, — if done solely to improve mankind, and 
not to do the will of our heavenly Father, — then our 
great business in life is left undone, and the most help- 
less sufferer who has been bedridden for years, or the 
child who has been called away after the first opening 
of its heart to the love of God, has spent life better, 
and better answered the end for which he was born, 
than we. 

And it is manifest, that to keep this end steadily in 
view is a wonderful means of ridding life of its care- 
fulness. If to be useful in our generation simply, be 
our main object, our happiness cannot but greatly 
depend upon outward circumstances. Our own weak- 
ened health, the failure of our faculties, the decay of 
our worldly prosperity, the state of other men's minds, 
and the condition of public affairs, may at any time 
cripple our usefulness, and defeat our object at the 
very moment when we thought ourselves sure of ob- 
taining it. And the prospect of death, in the vigour 
of his years, to a man engaged in some long and im- 
portant work, which he feels would be useful to man- 
kind if he could accomplish it, is one of the severest 
trials to him if he does not remember what his real 
business in life is, and when he may feel that it is 



214 SERBION XXIV. 

accomplished. Most painful would it be to be taken 
away from the harvest when his hand was just upon 
the sickle, if he did not think who was the Lord of 
that harvest, and to whom it belonged to find the 
reapers for it. But when we do think of all this, and 
recollect what is indeed our real business here, we 
cast at once all our care upon God, and resign our- 
selves contentedly to his disposal. Then we can 
never feel to die prematurely, never think that our 
labour has been in vain in the Lord, how little soever 
may be the earthly fruit of it. Contented to live, and 
thankful to die, happy in having been the instrument 
of good, satisfied in the failure of his efforts that his 
work has yet not been thrown away, as far as con- 
cerns its main object, such a man is indeed taking 
life rightly, and all its changes, be they what they 
may, are to him working together for good. 

Now it is with reference to this view of life espe- 
cially that Christ's particular employment, the mix- 
ing with others, not for business or for pleasure, but 
to do them good, is so exceedingly useful. In direct 
personal intercourse with our neighbours, when this 
is borne in mind, every day's work is complete in 
itself, — every day secures actions for comfortable 
memory here, and for a blessed account hereafter. 
Here, in truth, we may feel that the word is very 
nigh us, in our mouth and in our heart, that we may 
do it. It is surprising how much pleasure may thus 
be given every day, how much suffering relieved, and 
how much good done. Unlike the more laborious 
enterprises of human life, where the previous time 
and exertion is often almost wasted, if we are by any 
circumstance hindered from completing them, in these 



SERMON XXIV. 215 

daily charities, the seed is no sooner sown than the 
harvest is gathered, and the fruit stored away in 
security. In such a course of life, sufficient for the 
day is the good thereof, no less than the evil. 

But now, it may be asked, how can we secure such 
a life ? We are engaged in various worldly occupa- 
tions, which are undoubtedly our immediate and most 
particular duties, — which take up the greatest portion 
of our time, and oblige us many times to provide for 
the future, to live for much more than for the day. 
I said, in my former sermon, that we cannot, indeed, 
imitate Christ exactly in this point, but that we must 
find opportunity to do sometimes what he did always. 
The opportunities, of course, will vary greatly ; and 
while, in some situations, like that of a clergyman 
with the care of a parish, Christ's employment may 
actually be ours, and our main business is just the 
same as his was, — yet in other professions and situa- 
tions of life it is not so ; and the opportunities for fol- 
lowing his example must be carefully treasured up 
whenever they do occur, and multiplied by our own 
watchfulness. But, in whatever station or employ- 
ment, we must find them or make them, if we would 
not deprive ourselves of what may well be called the 
salt of our daily living. We must, if we would keep 
ourselves unspotted from the world, acquaint ourselves 
with the dwellings of the poor. I do not say that we 
are all of us, and especially the very young, to go to 
them always with spiritual addresses : all are not fitted 
to give medicine for the soul, any more than medicine 
for the body ; and, to say nothing of the great disorder 
and irregularity of every man taking up the minis- 
ter's part, there are a great many who would not at 



216 SERMON XXIV. 

all know how to do it. But good may be done both 
to mind and body, and infinite good done to our own 
souls, without interfering either with the duty of the 
minister, or with that of the physician. To ourselves 
it is a great benefit to learn really what poverty is, — 
to see how it is borne, and to think, as we must think, 
how hard we should find it ourselves to bear it. To 
the poor, on the other hand, nothing is more welcome, 
nothing more soothing, than the mere proof of our 
interest in them, and Christian regard to them. We 
need not go with alms always, and it is far better that 
we should not ; but out of mere friendliness, — to vary 
the sameness of a life which has far less of variety 
and amusement than our own, — to listen to their sto- 
ries, — to open their hearts to kindness, when the hard- 
ships of life may have well nigh utterly hardened 
them. Nor do I say that even this could be done 
generally with propriety by young boys here ; but, at 
the same time, there is no boy so young as not to be 
concerned in what I have been saying : for, if not 
here, there is scarcely one of you who might not 
begin the practice of becoming acquainted with the 
poor under the care of your friends at home ; and of 
thus learning, when here, to leave off every kind of 
wrong or insult to them, such as you know are some- 
times committed. And certainly, as I said before, 
those among you of more age and experience might 
do more ; and, without stepping in the slightest degree 
beyond what is proper and becoming, you might find 
opportunities, even here, of doing in this manner, 
much good to others, and much, very much more, to 
yourselves. 

But God does more for us even than this. He en- 



SERMON XXIV. 217 

ables us, if we choose, to make a great deal even of 
our common intercourse with others, — an imitation of 
Christ's life, and an improvement to our souls. And 
here, at least, we all have our opportunities, unless 
we choose to neglect them. Even at the mar- 
riage feast at Cana, even at supper in the Pharisee's 
house, or when talking with the woman of Samaria, 
who came to draw water at Jacob's well, did Jesus 
glorify his heavenly Father. So too may we glorify 
him, not only in our visits to the poor, but in our in- 
tercourse with those of our own station ; not only in 
more solemn occasions, but in our business, and in our 
intercourse of common civility. At school, in your 
common dealings with one another, how much rude- 
ness and unkindness, and encouragement of evil and 
discouragement of good, would instantly be done 
away, if as Christ was, so were you in this world ! 
How much happiness would be occasioned, where 
there is now, perhaps, only uncomfortableness ; how 
many silent lessons of good would be conveyed, where 
evil is now taught so carelessly ! And, in later life no 
less, how much proud or angry excitement, — how 
much mortified feeling, or encouraged vice, or folly, 
would be softened, and soothed, and chastened down, — 
if we mixed with each other, in the common course of 
life with something of the spirit of Christ ! As things 
now are, not only business but pleasure itself is often 
a weariness : we cannot take part in either without 
the tone of our minds being too often either hardened 
or irritated ; the peace of the Spirit is not with us 
when the work of the day is over. It is useless, and 
not altogether true, to say, that the fault of this is in 



218 SERMON XXIV. 

others ; others may be faulty, and, doubtless, are so ; — 
but how little would their faults affect us, if they were 
met by nothing bad within our own bosoms ! For 
even supposing our charity to be ever so lively, — if 
we felt even as Christ felt for the evil of others, and 
for the ruin which they were bringing on themselves 
by it, — and if we were wearied by it as he was, when 
he cried, " O faithless and perverse generation, how 
long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer 
you ?" — yet still, this sorrow and this weariness are 
not inconsistent with that peace of the Spirit which 
Christ gives, and which he himself declared to be far 
different from that which "the world giveth.'' It 
would be a sorrow and a weariness that w^ould rather 
turn us more heartily to God, than a restlessness which 
makes us shrink from him. It would only make us 
long the more for that rest that remaineth for the 
people of God, and not drive us back to wander after 
our own ways in this world's wilderness. 

Such, then, is Christ's daily lesson to us : not to be 
idle or slothful in our work; and to sanctify it by 
doing it as to him, and not as to man. Not to be 
idle, — as those who have mere bodily faculties, who 
live only to eat, and drink and sleep ; not to be too 
busily and carefully engaged in our own labour, and 
still less for its own sake, as those who lived only for 
themselves, and for this world, — and to whom God, and 
Christ, and eternal life, had never been made known. 
Let us work earnestly, — for so did Christ ; but let us 
work also as doing God's will, and for the improvement 
of our own souls, or else our work will not be such as 
He will acknowledge at his coming. 



SERMON XXV, 



MARK VI. 31. 

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into 
a desert place, and rest a while, 

I AM now come to the conclusion of the subject which 
I have been dwelling on in my four last sermons. I 
said, that in the verse from which my present text is 
taken, there were three things deserving of our sepa- 
rate attention : — first of all, Christ's constant diligence 
and activity ; " they had no leisure so much as to eat ;" 
secondly, The nature of that employment: intercourse 
with other men, for the purpose of doing them good, 
in body or soul : and, thirdly, his thinking it right, 
from time to time, to have intervals of rest: — "Come 
ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a 
while.'' And, with respect to this latter point, I said 
that we knew from other places how our Lord em- 
ployed these periods of rest; and that although, as 
partaking of the bodily weaknesses of our nature, he 
may be supposed to have needed rest as we do, in its 
common and simplest sense, yet his conduct teaches 
us what further use may be made of such seasons, and 



220 SEEMON XXV. 

how they may be improved to fit us for a renewal of 
work afterwards, by strengthening us, not only in 
body but in soul. 

It is this last part of the subject which I have re- 
served for this present occasion ; and I confess that I 
did so purposely, because it suits our present circum- 
stances so exactly, for just at this time there is one of 
these periods of rest going to commence for us; and 
we may well consider how we may turn it to some 
account. Six weeks, even to the youngest of us, are 
a longer term than we can afford to waste ; they are 
a period, whose influence upon the character cannot 
go altogether for nothing. When I speak of not afford- 
ing to waste them, I do not mean that we are wasting 
them if we are not going on in our common employ- 
ments ; but we are wasting them utterly if we think 
that we have nothing else to do in them than to enjoy 
ourselves to the utmost; if we fancy that we can 
safely dismiss all thoughts of duty, all recollection of 
the past, all regard for the future, and live as if all 
things around us would stand still while we were slum- 
bering. Let us see how we may so sanctify the rest 
that is now coming to us, as that Christ may acknow- 
ledge it to be fit for his disciples ; how we may so pass 
it, as to make it no less useful to us, in the highest 
sense, than any of our hardest hours of labour. 

First, I will say plainly, that the period on which 
we are going to enter, is intended for our rest, in the 
simplest sense; it is meant as a relief and relaxation 
from our common labour. According, then, to the 
degree of exertion that we may have made here, is 
our greater or less title to it ; for it is absurd to talk 



SERMON XXV. 22^1 

of rest where there has been no labour to call for it. 
In this sense, to those who have been idle here, it is 
like a pleasure which they have no right to ; a reward 
which they have not earned; and which they are 
doubly bound to use well when they have got it, as 
their having it at all seems more than they deserve. 
I mean, that when a boy feels that he has been idle 
here, he must feel that it is foolish for him to talk 
about its being fair for him to enjoy himself when he 
is at home ; he must know, that, as a mere matter of 
fairness, he has no right to enjoyment, since he did 
not choose before to work. But it is not uncommon 
to hear even those boys who have done little or nothing 
when at school, speak as if they had earned their rest 
when at home, and as if they were hardly used, if 
called upon to make any exertions : whereas, in truth, 
there are comparatively few who work so hardly here, 
as to need rest after it ; as we shall see at once, if we 
consider the far harder labour which persons of the 
same age, in other situations of life, often have to en- 
dure. Indeed, even with those who work the hardest, 
the approaching period is more required for other 
objects, than as a mere rest from labour ; and though, 
even in this respect, it is, no doubt, good for them, 
yet there are other ends answered, or which might be 
answered by it, to render it much more valuable. 

It may be said, however, that if the labour of school 
cannot in most cases be considered very great, yet 
that school is altogether a place of hardship and irk- 
someness in one way or another, and that therefore it 
may fairly be varied with seasons of greater indulgence. 
It is certain this doctrine is very much acted upon, as 



222 SERMON XXV. 

many parents seem to think that a boy can never be 
too much humoured, or have too many amusements, 
when he is at home, to make up for the restraints and 
the uncomfortableness which he is supposed to endure 
at school. And the things in which this indulgence 
is sometimes shown, are precisely such as to confirm 
a boy in his worst habits ; — I mean indulgence in 
eating and drinking, and in indolence, or rather in 
laziness. There is something shocking in seeing so 
sacred a name as home degraded by such low asso- 
ciations as these ; — that it should be thought of as a 
place where a boy can get his appetite better pamper- 
ed, and his laziness less disturbed. Some points in- 
deed there are, in which home is fairly and properly 
a place of greater indulgence ; — ^things, which so far 
from being low or degrading in themselves, are abso- 
lutely in their proper degree useful ; but which we 
cannot allow here, because amongst so many, it is 
impossible to keep them to their proper degree only. 
For these, home is the fit place ; and in this respect, 
one feels a pleasure in thinking that the restraints of 
school are taken ofi*, because they can be taken off* 
with propriety. But, besides these two sorts of home 
enjoyments, there is another which is, I believe, often 
keenly felt by young boys, and which may give us 
matter for useful reflection. In the two former cases, 
school cannot be different from what it is. We ought 
not to encourage boys in their love of eating and 
drinking, and in their indolence — we cannot here allow 
many of those amusements which may very fitly be 
given them at home, because they can be there sepa- 
rated from their evil. But the third point in which 



SERMON XXV. 223 

home is often found to afford so keen a contrast to 
school, is one in which school might and ought to alter 
itself. I mean the change which a boy now too often 
feels in the general treatment and disposition of those 
around him, in going from school home, or in coming 
from home to school. At home a boy meets with no- 
thing but kindness ; — it is not always well judged 
kindness indeed, but still it is kindness : — his feelings 
and his comfort, far from being needlessly hurt or 
interfered with, are, perhaps, sometimes overmuch con- 
sulted. It might be well, perhaps, if home and school 
could in this borrow something of each other ; if there 
was somewhat less of weak indulgence there, and less 
of roughness and want of consideration here. But 
our business is with ourselves; with the faults of 
school, and not with the faults of home. In some in- 
stances, indeed, all the discomfort of school has arisen, 
not from any necessary or useful strictness in the 
system, but from what is absolutely bad and mis- 
chievous; — I mean the unkindness and want of feel- 
ing among boys towards each other. It is my real 
belief, and it has often given me great pleasure to 
believe it, that there is as little of this evil here as 
any where ; — and that instances of gross cruelty and 
ill usage would be very contrary to the general prac- 
tice and state of feeling here. Still, we cannot flatter 
ourselves that we have nothing in this matter to cor- 
rect ; — that there is not a good deal of coarseness 
and unkindness shown towards each other, which 
must make the contrast of the gentleness and kindness 
of home to many amongst us exceedingly delightful. 
I never can consider this as a light evil, let it be as 



224 SERMON XXV. 

common as it will : indeed, it is difficult to say, in 
whose case it is more injurious, — in his who is guilty 
of it, or in his who suffers from it. Undoubtedly, this 
is a matter in which you ought all to keep a jealous 
watch over your own conduct : and every one of au- 
thority or influence amongst you ought to keep watch 
over that of others too. You are not indeed aware, 
perhaps, of all the pain which is given by it, and still 
less of the serious evil which it causes to the charac- 
ter. Impressions, at some periods of life, and in some 
minds, fade so quickly, that I verily believe many 
boys, when they are behaving with unkindness to 
others, absolutely forget how much they, a little while 
ago, suffered from the same treatment to themselves : 
and they have not perhaps thought or observed enough 
to know, how apt it is to harden the temper, and how 
a boy, finding himself teased, or laughed at, or ill- 
used, is driven at last, in a sort of self-defence, to 
check his own gentler and softer feelings, to answer 
ill usage with suUenness, and to endeavour to escape 
from the laughter of others, by turning it upon some 
new subject whose feelings are still more susceptible 
than his own. 

In this, then, home may justly be considered a place 
of rest, and its influence upon the mind is often no less 
wholesome than it is delightful for the moment. And 
this leads me very naturally to consider the highest 
sense in which the approaching holidays may, and 
should be, a rest to us, — I mean, in the sense of rest 
from all those evils to which we are most exposed here. 
We know that "the rest which remaineth for the 
people of God" is especially a rest from sin; — a rest 



SERMON XXV. 225 

from evil without us, and still more from evil within 
our own hearts ; — a rest of happiness, because it is a 
rest of holiness. And the same was the higher object 
of the Jews' Sabbath, — -and is the express and direct 
purpose of the Christian Sunday, Such, too, were 
those rests of our Lord, — -such as that mentioned in 
the text ; not, of course, that our Lord had in his own 
heart any sin to rest from, — but that his rests were 
used spiritually; were spent in prayer and com- 
munion with God, that his human nature might be 
the more abundantly strengthened for his work as a 
prophet. For this purpose it is most useful that you 
should go for a time to a place which, generally speak- 
ing, is more favourable to your moral improvement 
than school is, where you may not only leave off for a 
while your daily work, but much more may be removed 

I from many daily temptations to evil ; where you may 
not only enjoy more pleasure, but may get more good. 

■ You know full well in how many different ways op- 
portunities are given you at home in a greater degree 
than here : how all good is, in a manner, made more 
easy to you. There you have no temptations to lie, 
and swear, and indulge in offensive language : on the 
contrary, the influence of other company makes itself 
felt immediately : and it is extraordinary how seldom 
a boy is betrayed, when at home, into a single in- 
stance of the same bad language, which here may be 
quite habitual to him. There you have no temptation 
to unkindness, and little or none to bad company ; but 
are amongst those whose behaviour to you is a con- 
tinual provoking to love, and whose example, even 
though I well know how deficient the best human ex- 
10 



226 SERMON XXV, 

amples always^are, is yet generally, as far as you are 
concerned, likely to be profitable. There too, you 
have great opportunity for learning that duty on 
which I have lately dwelt so much — the duty of per- 
sonal intercourse with the poor. And there, too, your 
religious exercises and feelings have far less to im- 
pede and thwart them, far more to encourage and 
cherish them. Here, if for a moment, whilst assem- 
bled in this place, a solemn impression is made on 
your minds, how apt is it to be dissipated so soon as 
you leave the chapel, by the very different society 
and language which immediately surround you. And, 
let us do what we will, how can we render the Sun- 
day evening here, such as you find it in a well-order- 
ed family at home ; when all the good thoughts that 
the public worship may have awakened in the morn- 
ing, are confirmed by the family worship in the eve- 
ning ; when the Lord's day proceeds from beginning 
to end in one consistent tenor, and pours its whole 
influence upon the mind unmixed with any alloy of 
evil ! Surely, to such of you as have such homes, 
this approaching time may be, indeed, a season of 
Christ-like rest — a season in which you may draw in 
strength of soul, much more than of body, for the time 
of your return here. And even those whose home is 
far different from this picture, nay, if there be any so 
unhappy as even in your own household to have none 
to help you forward in the knowledge and love of God, 
yet even you will have some opportunities more than 
you enjoy here, — greater leisure with less of rude in- 
terruption: and even if you have no encouragement 
in good, you can, at least, dread no persecution for it. 



SERMON XXV. 227 

And remember, too, that this is a matter of life and 
death ; and though, if your homes be so unhappily- 
situated, your task is undoubtedly harder, yet still 
your salvation depends upon it; and the question is, 
not whether the path of good is easy or not, but whether 
we do tread it or no: this is the real question for this 
world, and for eternity. 

And now briefly for all of us here assembled, who 
are going so soon to part, never to be all again here 
united, may we, if we are enjoying the prospect of 
our approaching rest, in the common sense of the 
word, take care to make it a spiritual rest also ; to 
use it for our good, as well as for our refreshment. 
We expect that it will be pleasant, but that does not 
rest with us to determine ; we may at any rate make 
it profitable, for that, through Christ, we can do if we 
will. Those of us who return here, may return with 
a spirit strengthened and purified, to do God's will at 
school. Those who are going to enter on another 
sphere of duty may well need some such interval of 
Christian rest, to prepare for a new line of Christian 
labour. These intervals will not always come so 
readily and so free from care in more advanced life, 
even though we may need them more. Would that we 
may feel God's goodness in granting such to us in our 
peculiar line of life here ; and let us all pray earnest- 
ly, that he will give us grace to avoid the double con- 
demnation which awaits those to whom much is given, 
and at whose hands their Lord, when he comes to 
reckon, finds no return. 



SERMON XXVI, 



EPHESIANS V. 17. 

Be ye not unwise, hut understanding what the will of 
the Lord is. 

It is plain, that when the Apostle bade the Ephesians 
not to be unwise, he spoke of a want of wisdom which 
they might remove if they would ; when he told them 
to be understanding, he spoke of something which 
they might get if they would : and we also can get it, 
unless we can show that our case is different from 
that of the Ephesians, and that what was within their 
power is, for some reason or other, not in ours. I do 
not suppose that any grown-up person, at least among 
the richer classes, would venture to plead such an 
excuse : they, at least, cannot pretend to have less 
means of understanding what the will of the Lord is, 
than were possessed by the Ephesians. But young 
persons of all classes, and grown-up persons amongst 
the very poor, may think, perhaps, that to them the 
excuse does apply. A poor man will often say 
that he is no scholar, meaning by that, that he cannot 
understand about the things of Christ ; and a young 



SERMON XXVI. 229 

person, whether rich or poor, will say that he is not 
old enough, and that added years are necessary be- 
fore he can understand what the Bible wishes him 
to learn. 

Now certainly this excuse, both in the case of the 
poor and in that of the young, is, to a certain degree, 
true. To a certain degree it is true, that they cannot 
understand the things of Christ : that is, that if we 
take three persons equally well disposed, and of equal 
natural abilities, — the one a grown-up man who has 
been well educated, the second a poor man, and the 
third one who has not yet grown up to manhood, — it 
is very certain that there is a great deal in the Bible 
which the first will understand better than the other 
two. And so, if we could compare the understanding 
of spiritual things enjoyed by the very best and wisest 
Christian in the world, with that which the same per- 
son will gain when he shall see God face to face, the 
difference would be not like that of the other case, but 
something infinitely greater ; greater, perhaps, than 
we can ever conceive, unless we shall be so happy as 
to experience it. But as a good man's understanding 
of God's will, though far less than it will be hereafter 
in heaven, is yet quite enough to light him on his 
way thither ; so, and in a much greater degree, is the 
knowledge to be attained by the poor, or by the young, 
however in some respects inferior to that of others, 
yet quite as effectual as theirs to bring them to the 
kingdom of God through Christ Jesus. 

To the youngest then, and to the poorest, we may 
use the words of St. Paul : "• Be ye not unwise, but 
understanding what the will of the Lord is." From 



230 SERMON XXVI. 

the youngest, and from the poorest, Christ looks to 
find some fruit ; and if he finds none, the tree is 
ready to be cut down, and cast into the fire. They 
have, indeed, a great claim upon the assistance of all 
those who, from being richer or older, may be able to 
help them to understand more ; but even if this assist- 
ance be withheld, or unskilfully given, however great 
the fault may be in those who do not afford it, yet 
this is no excuse for those who have not received it : 
because, if they could not bring forth much fruit, 
still they could have borne some ; and where there is 
none at all, there will fall God's judgment. And 
this I suppose to be our Lord's meaning, when he 
said, that he who knew not his lord's will, and did 
commit things worthy of stripes, should be beaten 
with few stripes. We might expect rather, that if he 
knew not his lord's will, he would not be beaten at all ; 
but Christ meant to show us that there is no such 
thing as a complete and helpless ignorance about our 
duty : that a man may know little, it is true, but that 
there is no one who knows nothing ; no one, in short, 
who knows so little as not to be deserving of punish- 
ment if he does not turn that little into more. 

This is true to the utmost, as far as you are con- 
cerned : there is not one who hears me, let him be as 
young as he will, who might not understand the will 
of Christ better than he does ; there is none who does 
not understand it well enough to make him deserving 
of God's punishment, for not turning his knowledge 
to better account. When you come to this chapel, 
there is not one of you who is excusable for not attend- 
ing to what he hears ; there is not one of you who 



SERMON XXVI. 231 

could not derive good from it. It may not, indeed, 
be easy for us to make our addresses to you as plain 
or as forcible as we could wish ; and, assuredly, it is 
our duty to labour as much as possible, that the few 
minutes, for it is hardly more, during which we speak 
to you from this place, shall be turned to good ac- 
count on our part ; but then you must do your duty 
by yourselves, or else all that we can do for you is 
nothing : you must try to learn, and to remember, and 
to put together what you hear. It is surprising how 
quick we learn things when we really go to work in 
earnest about them. Men thrown amongst foreigners, 
whose language they cannot understand, attend to 
every sound and look and gesture ; by the look or the 
sign they try to make out what the sound means, and 
if they hear it again, they catch at it as at something 
which they know, because they have learnt it be- 
fore : and so everypittle that they do learn, being re- 
membered and applied in its proper place, helps them 
on to learn more. If you would do the same, even 
in a much lower degree, — if you would but think, 
that what is read to you, or told you, is read and told 
in order to be remembered — that it ought to go into 
your minds, as so much secured for future use, and 
that when the time comes for using it, it is hard 
never to find it forthcoming, — you may depend upon 
it that what is read in this chapel, both the prayers, 
the lessons, and the sermons, would, in a short time, 
give you a very much fuller understanding than you 
now have of what the will of the Lord is. 

But you have this understanding enough already 
to make vou without excuse in the sight of God, if 



1^ 



232 SERMON XXVI* 

your lives bring forth no fruit. You have con- 
sciences within you, which tell you, in language which 
you cannot mistake, whether you are at peace with 
God or no. If this be not quite clear, — for I would 
be understood by the very youngest among you, — 
I will put it in another way^ You can tell well 
enough whether you like coming to chapel, or no ; 
whether you like to hear about God, or to think of 
him, or to pray to him. If you do not^ cannot you 
tell why you do not J If you could not think of the 
answer to this question yourselves, at least you will 
see that it is the true one when you hear me mention 
it. I will tell you why you do not like it: because 
you do not really believe how God loves you, and 
what he has done for you. It is nothing but this : 
for if you really did believe that God was a dearer 
friend to you than all your relations, — ^that Jesus 
Christ has done more for you than they have, or ever 
could do, — and that God will give you better things 
than ever you have received, or can receive, from 
any one else, — it is quite certain that you would like 
very much to hear of him, and to pray to him : for 
praying to him is nothing else than speaking to him ; 
and every one loves to speak to his best friend. Be- 
lieve that God loves you, that he is more to you than 
father and mother, — and that when you go home to 
him, it will be infinitely more happy for you, than the 
happiest home to which ever boy returned from school^ 
— and you would be as sure to love thinking and talk- 
ing of him, as you do now love to think and talk of 
the pleasures of your earthly home, when you are for 
a while released from schooL 



SERMON XXVI. 233 

But you have seen your earthly home, and your 
earthly parents ; — you know what its pleasures are, 
and what their love is ; but of God and of heaven 
you can fancy nothing. True it is, indeed, in one 
sense, that neither you nor I (for in this we are all of 
us alike) can fancy distinctly the happiness of our 
eternal home, or the nature of our heavenly Father. 
It is natural to wish that we could. The Apostles 
wished it, when Philip said to Christ, " Lord, show 
us the Father, and it sufficeth us ;" — the greatest 
of the prophets wished it, when Moses said to God, 
" I beseech thee, show me thy glory." But this never 
has been granted, and never may be : " Eye hath 
^ot seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into 
the heart of man to conceive the things that God hath 
prepared for them that love him;" and the eternal 
Father who dwelleth in light unapproachable, no 
man hath seen or can see. So then, this difference 
must remain between our earthly and our heavenly 
homes, — our earthly and our heavenly Father, — that 
the one we have seen, and can conceive ; the other 
we have not, neither can we. You know that the 
Bible speaks much of faith ; and this is the very mean- 
ing of faith, — to believe in and hope for that which 
we do not yet see or enjoy. But are there not pleas- 
ures of older life, even in this world, which you 
cannot now understand, but which you know are 
pleasures, and very real ones, because you see older 
persons heartily enjoying them ? You cannot enjoy 
nor understand these pleasures now, but you will 
when you are older ; so that there may be very great 
and very real happiness prepared for you, which you 
10* 



234 SERMON XXVI. 

cannot at present at all conceive. And thus much in 
general : — but to say the truth, something of the hap- 
piness of heaven, the very youngest of you can con- 
ceive, better perhaps than even some of the pleasures 
of advanced years in the world. I will hope and 
believe, that every one of you has known some few 
happy moments in the course of his life, when he has 
felt the pleasure of sincerely endeavouring to be good ; 
— when, not only no bad passion was awake within 
him, but he was actually aware of the strong work- 
ings of good ones : — when he felt to love every one, 
and to try with all his heart to be what he ought to be. 
And if I am not mistaken, the moments when we have 
felt thus have been very often when we have commit- 
ted some fault, and have been brought to a proper 
sense of it; — when we have been fully forgiven, and 
our hearts have been softened at once by the reproof 
and the pardon. I do think that every one of us, at 
some one time in his life, has been in this happy state ; 
and I should believe that the remembrance of it would 
rise within him, as of the greatest happiness that he 
ever knew. Now, in feeling thus, I may say it with 
reverence, we have felt for one little while something, 
in a very low degree, of that happiness which reigns 
in heaven for ever. That sincere turning away from 
sin, and longing after goodness, — that opening of the 
heart to all soft and kind affections, when we feel that 
we have been heartily forgiven, — that forgetfulness 
of self, and deep consciousness of love, which marked 
the mom£nt of repentance, however soon they again 
vanished, — these are among the pleasures of heaven ; 
and of these, we have all, — I believe that I may say 



SERMON XXVI. 235 

it, all, — at some time or other in our lives, tasted the 
sweetness. 

But then God, — He who is all in all in heaven, — 
him we have not seen nor can conceive : how then 
can we love him ? If I were speaking to heathens, I 
should say, look round upon the works of his hands ; 
— this most beautiful world, with all the millions of 
creatures to whom he has given life, and breath, and 
all things ; with all the host of heaven, who move 
through infinite space, in obedience to his laws. I 
would say, read the lives and the words of good and 
wise men ; see how good and noble thoughts have 
struggled victoriously against temptation ; how self- 
* denying virtue has wrought its perfect work, abund- 
antly supported and blest, though all outward things 
were against it. I would say, look at these images, 
imperfect as they are, of God's power, and wisdom, 
and goodness ; and think, from these faint shadows, 
how blessed it must be to know the substance. But I 
am not speaking to heathens, and I need not refer to 
these shadows ; not to the outward world ; not to the 
faint and most imperfect image of Him set forth by 
human virtue. We have got a truer likeness of him, 
a perfect image : all the glory, all the goodness of 
God, is revealed to us in the person of Christ. Have 
we been so long time with him, and yet have we not 
known him ? He who hath seen Christ, hath seen 
the Father : how say we, then, show us the Father ? 
Yes, in that life, — in those words, — ^in that blessed 
death and glorious resurrection, — ^there is the image 
of God revealed to us : he who hath the Son, he who 



236 SERMON XXVIv 

knoweth the Son, he who loves him, the same knowsr 
God, and loves him, and is loved by him. 

And are you too young to understand this, too 
young to love God in Christ, too young to desire the 
happiness of heaven ? No, not too young ; and God 
grant that you be not too sinful ; for, believe me, it is 
nothing but your sin that hinders you from under- 
standing, and not your youth, or your want of ability. 
No, you are not too young ; and you cannot, surely^ 
be too hardened. Pray with me, — pray for me and 
for yourselves, — ^that we may none of us be too dull 
or too cold to understand what the will of the Lord is ; 
none too hard to love him and be loved by him« 



I 



SERMON XXVII. 



JOHN XI. 11. 

Our friend Lazarus sleepeth : hut I go, that I may 
awake him out of slee}'). 

As, in every thing else, men's tastes are different, so 
are they also with regard to the Scriptures. I mean, 
that amongst Christians, — all looking upon the Scrip- 
tures as their rule of faith and life, — there are particu- 
lar passages which will most suit the wants of par- 
ticular minds, and appear to them, therefore, full of 
an extraordinary measure of comfort and of wisdom. 
I am speaking, however, of persons who are in earnest, 
and not trying to cheat their own souls : for there may 
be persons who are most fond of the very parts which 
they need least, — that is to say, of the parts which 
condemn the faults to which they themselves are least 
inclined ; and who turn away from those which con- 
tain a medicine for their own particular disease. But 
let a man deal with himself truly ; let him know, as 
who does not know, if he will but inquire, what are his 
own weaknesses, and what are the spiritual weapons 



238 SEKMON XXVII. 

which he most needs ; — and then he will be better 
able to direct himself in reading the Bible profitably, 
than any other person can direct him. 

So there are parts which one man may pass over 
lightly, and which, to another, may seem to be full of 
most particular beauty. And though he must not 
expect others to see in them all that he does, — nor 
make his own interpretation that which all others 
must follow, — yet as some may think and feel with 
him, and no man can be harmed by hearing another's 
views of the riches of God's word, if he does not seek 
to strain it into something foolish or mischievous, so I 
will venture to lay before you some of the thoughts 
which the words of the text have been apt to awaken 
in my own mind, — coming as they do from a part of 
the Scripture which seems to me one of the richest of 
all in wisdom, in comfort, and in raising our affections 
to God and to Christ. 

" Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," said our Lord ; 
" but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." 
There seems to me to be contained in these few words 
one of the most powerful charms in the world to lull 
the bitterness of death, and to make us anxious to 
become such as that we may humbly venture to apply 
them to ourselves. What would we, each of us, give, 
when our last hour was come, to feel that Christ 
would so speak of us ? " Our friend sleepeth ; but I 
go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Yet this is 
the language in which Christ does speak of every one 
who has died in his faith and fear, — in which he will 
speak of us, if we do not so live as to shut ourselves 
out from his salvation. 



SERMON xxvir. 230 

" Our friend sleepeth." How much is there in 
these three simple words ! Christ speaks of Lazarus 
as his friend ; and St. John tells us that he loved him 
and his sisters. But the title is not reserved for Laz- 
arus only : " Ye are my friends," he says to his Apos- 
tles, "if you do whatsoever I command you." It is 
not because they ate and drank with him, and went 
about with him : if it were, we could not, indeed, hope 
that the title would belong to us. But they were his 
friends, if they did whatsoever he commanded them ; 
and this we can do now as entirely as they could. 
Christ, therefore, will call us his friends, as much as 
he did his first twelve disciples, as much as he did 
Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus. He told one of his 
Apostles, when he expressed his belief in him after 
his resurrection, that he, indeed, because he had seen 
him, had believed ; but blessed were they who had 
not seen, and yet had believed. If there be a differ- 
ence, then, his promise is almost more gracious to us 
than to those who saw and knew him on earth ; we 
may be sure, that if we do whatsoever he commands 
us, he will quite as much call us his friends as he did 
them. 

"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." The disciples 
could not understand that, by this gentle term, he 
could possibly mean a thing so fearful as death. 
They thought that he meant to speak only of sleep 
literally ; insomuch that Christ was obliged to express 
himself in other words, and to tell them plainly, 
" Lazarus is dead." And in this we are all of us 
very like the disciples. We talk of another life, 
when we think it at a distance, but we have really 



240 SERMON XXVII. 



fe 



got but a very little way towards overcoming our fear 
of death. We fear it very nearly, if not quite as 
muchj as the heathen do. And this is so natural, 
that no mere words will ever get the better of it, unless 
we put ourselves in time into such a state of mind as 
may help us to see that the words are really nothing 
else but simply true. It is not by reading or repeat- 
ing the words of Christ, that we can at once make 
them the food of our souls, and derive from them their 
full benefit. But still, here is the fact, that Christ 
does call the death of his friends a sleep ; and the 
same expression is used more than once by his Apos- 
tles and first disciples, in speaking of the deaths of 
true Christians. We may learn to make our own 
death such as to deserve the name ; we may, with 
God's blessing, even feel ourselves that it does deserve 
it. And this, without any distinction as to the man- 
ner of it, so far as regards its sharpness or easiness to 
the body. We know not, indeed, how Lazarus died, 
whether it was by a death painful or easy ; but we do 
know how Stephen died, — of whom it is said, no less 
than of Lazarus, that " he fell asleep." We know 
that his death was sudden and violent ; — with much 
suffering of body, — and nothing, as far as human aid 
was concerned, to comfort his mind. He died, sur- 
rounded by his enemies, who looked upon him as a 
criminal and a blasphemer, and, as such, had no pity 
or sympathy for him. And yet, when he died, " he 
fell asleep ;" — all the bodily pain, — all the want of 
human sympathy and comfort, — all the suddenness of 
the wrench from life, in the midst of health and 
strength, — all this shall not prevent the Christian's 



SERMON XXVII. 241 

death from deserving no harsher name than that of 
sleep. 

But what follows ? " Our friend Lazarus sleep- 
eth ; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." 
May we believe Christ to say these words over every 
one of us, so soon as the breath is departed from our 
body : "He comes to awake us out of sleep." The 
time will seem no longer than the four days which 
passed before he awakened Lazarus : a thousand years 
are in his sight as but one day ; and when we have 
once done with earthly time, we may, perhaps, be 
able in some degree to reckon years as he does. But 
assuredly, whatever be our state in the interval, we 
shall have no consciousness of his tarrying ; the wea- 
riness of expectation, the longings of hope deferred, 
will have ended for ever. He comes as in a moment, 
to awake us out of sleep ; to a waking, which it is 
our best wisdom to endeavour humbly to dwell upon, 
however infinitely our highest aspirations may fall 
short of its reality. An end will then be put for ever 
to all those lingerings of unbelief which are here, 
perhaps, never altogether rooted out. God, whom 
we have sought after in some measure darkling ; — 
whose presence, even in the best men, sometimes 
leaves them without any consciousness of it ; — God 
and Christ will then be for ever with us, and we shall 
for ever feel that we are with them. Of all the 
thoughts that may rush into a Christian's mind, when 
at his last hour he utters his Lord's words, and says, 
" It is finished," — of all the evil to which he then bids 
an everlasting farewell, — none would be remembered, 
I should imagine, with such deep joy and thankful- 



242 SERMON xxvn, 

ness at having escaped it, as our dark and imperfect 
sense of God, and of his love to us : no change will be 
so blessed, as that, from seeing him in a glass darkly, 
to the seeing him face to face. 

I know that to young minds these thoughts are but 
little familiar ; it seems strange to them to talk of 
leaving their earthly life when they are just beginning 
it ; and if such thoughts could only be felt when life in 
its natural course were drawing to an end, or when its 
sorrows had made us wish that it were so, then indeed 
it would be vain to press them upon you in the midst 
of youth, and hope, and enjoyment. But there is no 
falser slander against the truth of God, than to repre- 
sent those only as longing after, or dwelling upon their 
eternal inheritance, who, whether from years or from 
misfortune, have nothing more left to hope for here. 
By far the happiest persons I have known, and the 
experience of most other persons would, I think, say 
the same, — by far the happiest, both in their own 
minds and in their outward circumstances, with most 
blessings to enjoy in life, and hearts and spirits most 
alive to the enjoyment of them, have been persons, to 
whom, as far as man can judge of man, the conscious- 
ness of their eternal inheritance was most continually 
present, and the prospect of being with God most in- 
tensely welcome. They had no more reason to think 
death near than you have ; for you must be well 
aware that the charms of life are quite as strong in 
middle age as in early youth ; and it is not more natural 
to think of the decay of our faculties when we are 
possessing them in all their vigour, than when they are 
not yet fully matured. In fact, the thoughts which I 



SERMON XXVII. 243 

have dwelt on are the fit companions of our journey- 
through life, and the earlier we take them up, the 
better. They must teach us to live first, or they will 
never teach us to die : and he who thinks them fit only 
for a period of sickness, or sorrow, or for old age, is 
but putting them off* to the very time when he will find 
it the hardest to derive any comfort from them. 

For what is it, brethren ? " Our friend Lazarus 
sleepeth ; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." 
They are, indeed, words of great comfort, words which 
it would be more than the value of all earthly things, 
that Christ should speak of each one of us when we 
are departed. But then, they are words which, if 
you were indeed near your latter end, it would be im- 
possible to utter without the deepest fear and sorrow. 
What good would there be, in putting before you the 
picture of a blessing which you had forfeited ; of re- 
minding you of the happiness of that fortune which 
you had determined should not be your own ? If you 
thought yourselves very near death, I do not say that 
these words could profit you nothing ; but I may say, 
that, in all probability, they would be useless : doubt- 
less, they might alarm you ; they might make you 
think what provision you had made for your last great 
change ; whether, indeed, you might dare to hope 
that Christ would speak of you, when dead, as of his 
friend who had fallen asleep, and whom he was pres- 
ently coming to awaken. You might and would find, 
that your lamps were gone out, and would be anxious 
to lose no time in getting a fresh supply of oil. "But 
while they went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and 
they who were ready went in with him to the marriage, 



244 SERMON XXVII. 

and the door was shut." They who were ready went 
in with him ; not they, who, when it was too late, 
were trying to become so. Believe me, in those late 
turnings to God, death is apt to come quicker than re- 
pentance : you would be called to meet Christ as your 
Judge, ere you could venture to think that you might 
love him as your Saviour : I say, ere you might 
venture to think that you might love him as your Sa- 
viour ; for we cannot love him as such, till we learn 
to hate our sins ; and this is far too hard a task to be 
learnt by enfeebled faculties, which, in so many years 
of their vigour, had been only learning and practising 
to love them. But to you, to all of us, I trust, here 
assembled, the words are not spoken too late. We 
may now make Christ our friend ; nay, he entreats 
and calls upon us to suffer him to be so. We 
may yet make our death a sleep, however sudden it 
may be, however deserted, however painful. We may 
yet so fall asleep in Christ, that we shall assuredly 
share in the promise which he made to Lazarus : he 
will come and awaken us out of sleep, that we may 
be where he is for ever. 



SEKMON XXVIII. 



LUKE XVI. 8. 

The children of this world are in their generation wiser 
than the children of light. 

It is a remarkable story told by the poet Cowper of 
himself, that when he was a young man, and living in 
London, where his companions were not only persons 
of profligate life, but of low and ungodly principles, 
they always had a great advantage over him when ar- 
guing upon the truth of Christianity, by reproaching 
him with the badness of his own life. In fact, it ap- 
pears that his life at that time was quite as bad as 
theirs ; and they used to upbraid him for it, telling 
him, that it would be well for him if they were right 
and he wrong in their opinions respecting the truth of 
the Gospel ; for if it were true, he certainly would be 
condemned upon his own showing. 

We must not indeed call a man of evil life one of 
the children of light in the highest sense of the term ; 
and yet in the sense in which our Lord uses it in the 
text, it does apply to any one who believes in his in- 
ward mind, that his obedience is due to Christ, how- 



246 SERMON XXVIII. 

ever little his outward conduct may agree with such a 
belief. They are children of light as far as God's 
mercy is concerned : — they have been chosen by him 
to receive the knowledge of his Son ; they have been 
called, and their understandings at least have listened 
to the call. They are children of light, then, in God's 
gracious purposes, — called, enlightened, redeemed ; — 
what more could have been done to the vineyard that 
has not been done in it ? but their own will makes them 
in the end the children of darkness ; they are foolish 
persons, who take their lamps, but take no oil with 
them : they are the vine of God's husbandry, — planted, 
watered, fenced about from every enemy, and open to 
the full sunshine of his love ; but when he looks that 
they should bring forth grapes, they bring forth wild 
grapes. These are the children of light of whom Christ 
speaks ; — and well might he say, that the children of 
this world are in their generation far wiser. 

This was what Cowper's unbelieving companions 
thought, when they taxed him with the folly and incon- 
sistency of living like a heathen, and yet professing 
to believe as a Christian. They, on the other hand, 
were consistent enough : they believed of nothing 
more than this world, and accordingly they lived for 
this world only. But as far as this world was con- 
cerned, the happiness which they believed to be within 
their reach, they did their best to gain ; — the misery 
which they supposed to threaten them, they did their 
best to avoid. These men, like the unjust steward in 
the parable, had at least the merit of acting wisely 
upon their own view of the matter ; they made the 
mammon of unrighteousness, that is, the riches and 



SERMON XXVIII. 247 

enjoyments of this world, serve their turn for all that 
they believed them capable of yielding. And, there- 
fore, Christ makes their conduct a reproof to Christians, 
who do not make the world yield to them that fruit, 
which, according to their professed belief, it might af- 
ford them. So much are we accustomed to admire 
consistency of character, an adherence to principles, 
an acting uniformly and steadily on one regular system 
of conduct, that these qualities in vulgar estimation 
even throw a lustre upon crime, and have caused some 
of the most wicked men that the world has ever seen 
to be accounted amongst the greatest. 

But if their presence almost seems to render vice 
respectable, what shall we say of the character in 
which they are wanting ? and much more when it is 
the very character which would set them off, no less 
than be set off by them, — a character in which their 
influence would be nothing but unmixed good ? If 
consistency with our principles be in some sort ad- 
mired even when they are evil, — if forethought cannot 
but exalt a human being, even when employing evil 
means to arrive at an evil end, — how can we excuse 
inconsistency and blind thoughtlessness, when the 
principles which we swerve from are those of mere 
goodness, — when the end, which our forethought might 
compass, and the means for attaining it, are alike pure 
and spotless ? This is the lesson which the parable 
of the unjust steward was designed to teach us, that 
nothing is more unworthy, nothing more ruinous, than 
to be a Christian by halves ; — to begin to build, and 
not be able to finish. Salt is good, but the salt that 
has lost its savour is good neither for the land nor yet 



248 SERMON XXVIII. 

for the dunghill, but men cast it out : and even so vile 
and worthless is that Christian in name only, who does 
not live according to his own principles, but in defi- 
ance of them, — who, with a journey to an eternal state 
opened before him, plays away his time on the road, 
and makes no provision for the end of his pilgrimage. 
We may be still the children of light ; but if we so 
live, we are fast hastening to make ourselves the chiI-= 
dren of darkness: we are chosen by God to be the 
heirs of glory, but we ourselves choose rather to be 
the heirs of folly and destruction. And it is this con- 
duct which, as I said before, the parable was designed 
to reprove. It reproves it by showing that the op- 
posite to this careless folly, — the habit of laying down 
a settled principle for our living, of acting steadily 
according to this principle, and of taking care before- 
hand that our chosen object in life shall never be 
lost to us, — that this habit, even when the principle is 
no better than self-interest, when the practice is 
wickedness, and the forethought for the security of 
our darling object is nothing but dishonesty and cun- 
ning, — still, is in itself so elevating, that even when 
thus grossly misapplied, it after all commands from 
ordinary men a considerable portion of respect. " The 
master of the unjust steward commended him because 
he had done wisely :" just as the language of com- 
mon history commends the unjust stewards on a larger 
scale, who have steadily pursued, through all dangers 
and difficulties, the several objects of their ambition 
and vainglory. It is this steadiness of aim, this con- 
sistency between principles and practice, this range 
of forethought, this unwearied and undaunted per- 



SERMON XXVIII. 249 

severance, whose presence seems to make vice almost 
respectable : whose absence makes, I do not say virtue, 
for virtue cannot exist without it, — but mere good 
dispositions, good inclinations, and a knowledge of our 
real condition and duty, no better than contemptible 
and worthless. 

I have purposely dwelt upon this subject with some- 
thing of repetition, because experience has taught me 
that this one parable of our Lord's is to many a stum- 
bling-block, and to few so useful as it ought to be. 
People seem to fancy that the unjust steward is held 
up as an object of imitation altogether : — that Christ 
himself excuses his dishonesty for the sake of the wis- 
dom of his conduct, as it is called ; — that is, his steady 
regard to his own interests. Some of this arises from 
a mere mistake, and something also from an obscure, 
and therefore a bad translation. If those who have 
Bibles will just refer to the parable for an instant, they 
will be able to follow me better. In the eighth verse, 
where it says, "And the lord commended the unjust 
steward," &c., — some careless readers fancy that the 
"lord'' means Christ; — whereas this verse is only a 
part of the story or parable ; — Christ telling us that 
" the lord or master of the unjust steward commended 
him," according to that common matter of fact to 
which I have already alluded, that men do often com- 
mend clever wickedness. Christ's own application of 
the story begins in the next or ninth verse ; — and here 
the translation is obscure, because the little word "of" 
in our common language now has another meaning 
from that which it had in the translator's own time. 
" To make to ourselves friends of the mammon of 
11 



250 SERMON XXVIII. 

unrighteousness,'' an English reader naturally un- 
derstands to mean, "to make the mammon of un- 
righteousness," or " unrighteous riches," our friends ; 
whereas, the real meaning of the words is, " Make to 
yourselves friends with, or by the mammon of un- 
righteousness;" — i,e. "so use the riches and other 
advantages of this world, as that they may gain you 
friends hereafter, — friends that will stand by you, 
when the riches themselves shall have perished." 
And I hardly need add what these friends are, — the 
record of good done upon earth, of misery relieved, of 
folly enlightened, of virtue encouraged and support- 
ed ; — the record of their thankful voices, who, having 
received from us good things in this world, shall 
welcome us with thanks and blessings, when we all 
stand together before Christ's judgment-seat. 

Such then is the parable; and, indeed, I scarcely 
know any one throughout the New Testament whose 
lesson we need more strongly. It is the repetition of 
the complaint of Elijah: "How long halt ye betwixt 
two opinions ? If the Lord be God, follow him ; but 
if Baal, then follow him." If there be no God, no 
duty, no life to come, — then let us eat and drink, or 
follow what likes us best whilst we are here, for to- 
morrow we die. But if we do believe that there is a 
God, — if we know that duty is the very soul and life 
of our life, — if we hope to be for ever where Christ is 
gone to prepare a place for us, — then let us live con- 
sistently with these principles, and live not for our own 
pleasure, but for his who died for us and rose again. 
Always and every where as this requires to be en- 
forced, it requires it nowhere more strongly than here. 



SERMON XXVIII. 1351 

Here, what wickedness there is, is inconsistent wicked- 
ness ; — it is the folly, the guilty and the miserable 
folly, of those who are now children of light, and are 
fast making themselves the children of darkness. 
The dreadful consistency of thorough evil, wicked 
principles leading naturally and deliberately to a 
wicked life, — the serving Baal, because you believe 
in Baal, — the disobeying Christ, because you have 
resolved that he shall not be your Saviour, — all this 
is as yet, I believe, far from you. If things be as 
I imagine, the expression of blasphemous opinions 
amongst you would be received with horror: and 
if there were a single individual among you who 
cherished such in his heart, he would probably find it 
his interest, for his own credit's sake, to conceal them. 
As yet, then, God speaks to you as to his children : — 
as yet, you are his redeemed, with whom he shows all 
long-suffering and patience, entreating them to stand 
fast, and not to throw away the everlasting shelter 
which his love has provided for them. As yet you 
are his redeemed : take heed that you do not become 
his enemies. Take heed that you do not, like Cowper, 
give an unbeliever just cause to say, that it is greatly 
for your interest that he should be right and you 
wrong, — for if your belief be right, you have nothing 
to expect but eternal misery. Think you, that this 
notion will have no effect upon you ? that it will be 
possible for you to go on long with the consciousness 
that it is your interest, — it is a dreadful thing to utter, 
but so it would be, — with the consciousness that it is 
your interest — to wish and believe Christianity to be a 
lie ? No ; it is impossible to go on long in such a state ; 



252 SERMON XXVllI. 

the end is and must be one of three things ; conver- 
sion, — a hardened and unbelieving heart, — or madness. 
One of the three must follow, whenever the contrast 
between what we believe to be true and our own evil 
lives, which practically deny it, is steadily presented 
before us. You know that, in Cowper's case, where 
there was a weakness of bodily constitution unable to 
bear such a struggle, the end was conversion, — but 
not without the horrors of madness : he was saved, 
but so as by fire. In common cases, where the 
bodily frame is stronger, the conflict is settled, one 
way or the other, before the mind is utterly distracted 
by its continuance : it settles either into the peace of 
God, or the peace of death. But let me not be mis- 
understood : it may be the peace of God, and yet not 
perfect peace, and far less peace that shall never again 
be broken ; it may be the peace of death, and yet not 
untroubled with occasional alarms and warnings, and 
not, therefore, beyond a possibility of being broken in 
time, ere the last trumpet shall scatter it to the winds 
for ever. But it is the peace of death, when men 
have quieted their consciences as to their daily living, 
without having their lives reformed according to the 
Spirit of Christ. It is the peace of death, when men 
put the Scriptures from them habitually, and either 
leave off their devotions altogether, or continue them as 
an unmeaning form. They may not have said to them- 
selves, '^ There is no God :'^ but they have managed 
to say it practically ; for, without longing to become 
like God, or caring to please him, they are not dis- 
turbed by the fear of his anger. They may attend 
Christian worship, and speak respectfully of Chris- 



SERMON XXVIII. 253 

tianity ; but its realities are no realities to them ; they 
set aside the question of salvation, as a thing which 
they do not like to enter upon. And thus they live 
in ordinary times peacefully enough : but if danger 
comes near them, either personally or to the state of so- 
ciety around them, — if they have reason to think that 
death is near, — then they find their peace troubled : 
it is not proof against all assaults ; it must be secured 
not only by setting aside the Gospel of Christ, but by 
trampling it under foot. The neutral state is no 
longer possible ; the question is brought to an issue : 
and they, who have hitherto not been the friends of 
Christ, are tempted to become his open enemies : they, 
who hitherto have not thought of his Gospel, now 
boldly deny and revile it. So, on the other hand, 
with those who are living in the peace of God. — I call 
it the peace of God, when a man, having endured for a 
time the struggle between his sins and God's will, is 
enabled by the Holy Spirit to end it, by making his sins 
give way to his principles ; by altering his heart and 
life, in conformity to his Saviour's image. Then the 
man is justified and sanctified, and, in St. Paul's strong 
language, confidently anticipating that what has so well 
begun, will end no less happily, he is saved. But St. 
Paul himself explains his meaning, by saying, that 
'' he is saved in hope," not actually : and where there 
is hope there must be uncertainty, and there may be 
fear. The sins that were overcome will rise again 
to the struggle ; or, as life goes on, and older years 
bring other temptations, it will not be the sins which 
he once overcame, and which he may more easily 
conquer again, from having conquered them once al- 



254 SERMON XXVIII. 

ready ; but it will be others, whose strength he has not 
yet tried ; an appeal to passions within him, of whose 
force he never till now had cause to be aware. And 
here is the need of watchfulness and prayer, that such 
a danger may never find us unprovided ; never find 
us without a just suspicion of our own weakness; 
never without a deep and lively knowledge of our 
Redeemer's strength. But, at any rate, the peace of 
our hearts is broken ; and struggles and dangers, for 
a time at least, interrupt it. Nor may we be sure 
that it will be only for a short time ; it may go on for 
years : not so, indeed, as that our peace is altogether 
lost, or that we are ever tempted to wish God's word 
untrue ; but yet, so as that our perceptions of its truth 
may be less keen ; and though our will to subdue our 
sins to Christ be unvaried, and its efforts continual, 
yet it may always find it opposed by the law in our 
members, and sometimes be overcome by it. Surely 
if it were not so, St. Paul would have had no need to 
bid us put on the whole armour of God ; for armour 
cannot be wanted if we are never to go into battle. 

I have gone on to things in life far beyond what your 
experience has yet reached to : — nay, inasmuch as I 
have carried forward my thoughts to the very end of 
our earthly course, I have anticipated my own ex- 
perience also. But so it is, — that when we have 
reached the top of the hill, we can look down it before 
us as well as behind us, — and while the ascent is yet 
fresh in our recollections, if not actually in our sight, 
we can see the path by which we have to go down to 
the conclusion of our journey. Nor can the map, if 
I may so call it, of any part of the journey of life, be 



SERMON XXVIII. 255 

without its uses to you, by whom, in the natural course 
of things, it must all be travelled over. Would to 
God, that while your age yet renders it impossible for 
you to be settled in the peace of death, you might 
shelter yourselves in the peace of God ; that, being 
children of light, you would walk as such ; that having 
everlasting habitations prepared for you, you would 
early prepare yourselves, by an entire turning to God, 
for entering into them. 



SERMON XXIX. 



GENESIS XXXIV. 30. 

And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled 
me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the 
land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites : and 
I being few in number, they shall gather themselves 
together against me, and slay me; and I shall be 
destroyed, I and my house. 

Such are the words which Jacob addressed to his sons 
after the slaughter of the Shechemites. We see that 
he does not speak to them of the guilt of their action, 
but of its rashness: — they had provoked by it all the 
people of the land who had hitherto suffered him and 
his house to sojourn amongst them ; but if they found 
these strangers guilty of such acts of violence, they 
v/ere likely to join together and destroy them as a 
common enemy. Mere prudence, however, weighs 
little against the impulses of strongly excited passion. 
The answer of the young men was ready : '^ '• Should 
he deal with our sister as with an harlot V Were we 
coolly to think of the future danger to ourselves, when 
we had sustained so gross an insult ? Let the con- 



SEHMON XXIX. 257 

sequences be what they may, we have avenged the 
honour of our house, and we do not repent of the 
deed." To this Jacob made no reply, for it is seldom 
that mere considerations of prudence can stand their 
ground against an excited sense of honour ; they seem 
so cowardly and so unworthy, when urged on such 
an occasion, that we feel ashamed to press them. 

There came a time, however, when Jacob was 
taught to judge the action of Simeon and Levi differ- 
ently ; when he no longer blamed it as imprudent, but 
detested it as wicked : not speaking of it as possibly 
affecting his own interests, but as being in itself, under 
whatever show of honour it was veiled, cruel and ac- 
cursed. Hear how he judges of it as his words are 
given in Gen. xlix. 5, " Simeon and Levi are breth- 
ren ; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. 
O my soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their 
assembly, mine honour, be not thou united : for in 
their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will 
they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for 
it was fierce ; and their wrath, for it was cruel ; I 
will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." 

Now what was it that made Jacob now form so 
much truer a judgment of an action, of which before 
he had spoken so differently ? The time and the 
place at which these last words were uttered will ex- 
plain this. Jacob was now going the way of all the 
earth ; the words were uttered from his death-bed. 
Then not only was the spirit of prophecy poured out 
upon him, that he should foretell the future fortunes 
of his posterity ; but something better still than 
prophecy, a truer knowledge of what was really good 
11* 



258 SERMON XXIX. 

and really evil. Then all those mists of passion, of 
evil example, of prejudice, of contented acquiescence 
in the v^orld's notions, which in our lifetime are apt 
to impair our judgment, were all rolled away before 
the rising light of another world. So it is; Death is 
a sure and true teacher ; but they are blessed for 
whom he does not unteach all their former notions, 
but rather set to his decisive seal, that they were right 
and good. 

Every one of us, the best as well as the worst among 
us, will however find that death, whenever it comes, 
will alter many of his feelings ; nor is this any matter 
of blame to us. It is not our fault that our bodies are 
not yet incorruptible ; that our knowledge is employed 
about things which must be done away. We need 
not wish, therefore, but rather the contrary, to feel in 
all respects at this moment as we shall feel when we 
are on our death-beds. It would not be wisdom, but 
disease, if we were now as insensible to all beautiful 
sights, to all sweet sounds, to all pleasant savours, to 
all the stirring influences of air and light, as we shall 
be when our mortal frame is perishing. Nor would 
it be wisdom, but folly, if fondly anticipating another 
state, instead of labouring to prepare ourselves for it, 
we were to be as indiflerent to earthly knowledge, to 
science, to philosophy, to history, to poetry, to all 
that strengthens, and enlarges, and enriches, and en- 
nobles our understandings, during this our absence 
from our heavenly home, as we shall feel when that 
absence is at length expiring, when the everlasting 
portals are opening before our eyes, and God himself 
will vouchsafe to be the object of our understanding 



SERMON XXIX. 259 

and of our love. No, my brethren, our earthly work 
must be done during the time of our earthly pilgrim- 
age ; and that is but a foolish and fanatical piety 
which would teach us to neglect it. Our bodies and 
our understandings are God's : let us use them as 
the honoured instruments of his glory here by doing 
his work, till the time shall come when he will fit 
them for a higher use, making the one put on incor- 
ruption, and elevating the other far above all its 
present doubts and ignorances, that they may not 
only do his will but enjoy his presence. 

In this then death will not unteach us the lesson of 
our past life, but finding that we have learnt it suffi- 
ciently, will call us on to something beyond it. And 
it were well if this were all : well indeed, if we were 
so living, as to have nothing hereafter to unlearn. But 
we know too well that this is not so ; we know that in 
our affections there is but too much of which we shall 
be heartily ashamed ; that we are not at all preparing 
ourselves for death's more perfect lesson. We know 
that feelings of pride, of indolence, of unkindness, of 
selfishness, are now constantly within us, to which we 
shall then wonder how we could ever have let our- 
selves be subject. We know that now God's love and 
God's approbation are but of slight value in our minds, 
when compared with the love and approbation of men. 
And we know also but too often how the love and ap- 
probation of men weigh as nothing in the scale, when 
compared with the gratification of ourselves. How 
bitterly shall we mourn over these feelings, in that 
hour when one little act of kindness will be more 
grateful to our memories than a whole life of enjoy- 



260 SEKMON XXIX. 

ment ; when the fullest glory that ever the voices pf 
men could give, will seem utterly worthless in com- 
parison of the slightest sign that we are approved of 
by God. 

I say that death will unteach us much that we have 
long learnt and practised in life. But there are some 
cases when the false lesson of life is not untaught in 
death, but at the judgment. Sometimes it has been 
learnt in life so deeply, that even in death we still per- 
sist in it ; our eyes have been so long blinded, that 
nothing less than the Son of Man coming in his glory 
to judge the quick and dead can open them. These 
are the cases alluded to in the Scripture, where it 
says, that the wicked has no bands in his death ; he 
has hardened himself so thoroughly, that he dies with- 
out any of the pangs of remorse. But there are 
other cases, far less dreadful indeed, and much more 
common. It happens very frequently that death does 
not make us unlearn the lesson of our lives, because 
its attack is so sudden and strong that we can neither 
learn nor unlearn any thing. It is, I believe, very 
rarely that the mind retains its faculties amidst the 
dissolution of the body. Either absolute delirium 
overthrows it, or the weakness of exhaustion unnerves 
it. There is then no power to consider the past or to 
dread the future ; it is all either a blank, or a con- 
fused mass of objects, which we have lost the ability 
to arrange in their order. Man indeed cannot tell 
with certainty what may be working within the bosom 
of a dying brother ; there may be even then groan- 
ings not uttered distinctly to any mortal ear, which 
the Spirit of Christ has inspired, and which He, ac- 



SERMON XXIX. 26! 

cording to whose will the Spirit's intercession is ever 
made, will be pleased to listen to and to bless. It is 
charity to hope that this may be so in the case of an- 
other ; but it is madness to trust to it in our own. 
Christ's words teach us a more solemn lesson : 
" while they went to buy, the bridegroom came ;" 
even they who were aw^are of their danger found that 
they had no time to remedy it ; but what shall be 
said of those, who were never aware of it at all ? 
How could they get the oil which they could not even 
so much as feel the need of? Alas ! if the lamp be 
not burning when the bridegroom's call is heard, I 
know not where or how we can then get the oil to 
kindle it. 

And therefore I confess that I attach but little 
value to any prayers that can be said, to any exhorta- 
tions that can be addressed to any one, when the 
stroke of death is on him. It does seem to me, so 
far as man can judge, that the state of trial is then 
over. With the certainty of death before our eyes, 
if we are in possession of our reason, and not utterly 
hardened into unbelief, we must be glad to do any 
thing that would save us from the wrath to come. 
But this is but coming to God of necessity, w^hen the 
world has nothing else to offer. Of course, in propor- 
tion to the hope of longer life is the degree of our trial ; 
and if a man thinks that he may yet recover, he is 
so far yet able to choose between God and sin : but 
the heart cannot fairly be said to be turned to God, 
when sin is no longer possible. 

The lesson of death then can rarely, I fear, be 
taught with any avail, when we have not begun to 



262 SERMON XXIX. 

learn it earlier. But it may be learnt in life, and 
learnt to our eternal benefit. It may be learnt in 
health, it may be learnt in sickness, if that sickness 
be not of too serious a kind. And here it is, I think, 
that we are apt to be too neglectful. If we are 
attacked by any slight complaint, we do not then 
think of religion ; nor do we, even if it becomes more 
painful and lingering, so long as we do not think it 
dangerous. But the moment that we think we are 
going to die, that is, when our trial is over, then we 
are anxious to have prayers read to us, then we want 
to hear the word of God, then too we often desire to 
partake of that communion, for which while it might 
have been a means of grace, we cared not. This is 
a fault very common, I fear, and for which we have 
all greatly to reproach ourselves. Whereas, slight 
indispositions do, in fact, teach us part of the lesson 
of death ; but they offer to teach it us in time. Even 
a day's loss of appetite, a day's or a night's restless- 
ness, a day's want of interest in our common business 
and amusements, does but speak in gentle language 
what we must one day hear in thunder. But because 
it is so gentle, therefore it is the more such as the 
Spirit of God would choose to teach us in. O that 
we would listen to these mild w^arnings, to that gra- 
cious language which does not yet terrify, but would 
only remind us that it will one day speak more stern- 
ly. Now when there is so much of this language 
addressed to us, — so much of sickness that is not what 
we call dangerous, — which we might turn so easily 
to our everlasting profit, why will we wait till it as- 
sume that more fearful form, when it is more like a 



SERMON XXIX. 263 

judgment than a chastisement ; — more apt to cut us 
short in our sins than to turn us away from them ? It 
is indeed a fatal error which keeps the Bible out of 
the chamber of sickness, and only calls for it when it 
is become the chamber of death. 

And now, in conclusion, what is the lesson which 
death will teach us, if we retain our senses, but which 
will then be too late, and which therefore must be 
learnt beforehand ? In one w^ord, the lesson is to 
walk in the fear and love of God, through Jesus 
Christ, or to use our Saviour's own language, '' This 
is life eternal ; to know thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." This is all in 
all, — and so you know it to be. It is not to know 
God and Christ, if you merely hear about them on 
Sundays or at particular times ; with attention, per- 
haps, only half excited ; with affections altogether 
cold. But if we were to th nk of them daily and 
often, with interest, with fear, with love unfeigned ; — 
if God were to be with us in our work and in our 
play, to check the false tongue, the violent hand, the 
proud, or sensual, or covetous thought, the indolent 
temper, the unkind or selfish or unjust action, would 
it not indeed be life eternal ? Yes, you know it would 
be no less : if God is indeed your God, the God of 
your understandings, the God of your hearts, you 
know that you would be pure and holy and happy : 
if you hear the voice of the Son of God now, and are 
aroused by it from the death of sin, you know with a 
full assurance of faith, that even from the grave you 
will hear it no less, when he calls you not to a life of 
faith, but to a crown of glory. 



SERMON XXX, 



EPHESIANS VI. 13. 

Wherefore take unto you the whole arraour of God, 
that ye may he ahle to withstand in the evil day, and 
having done all, to stand. 

The Ephesians, to whom these words are addressed, 
lived, as we know, in the very beginning of the Gos- 
pel : they had been converted by St. Paul himself, and 
not only had seen him do miracles, but some of their 
own number had also themselves received gifts of the 
Holy Spirit, and had been enabled to work miracles 
on others. — We cannot doubt, from what is mention- 
ed both in the Acts of the Apostles and in other writ- 
ings, of thehab its of the first Christians, that they 
were frequently in the practice of receiving the Lord's 
Supper. Nor were these means of improvement ne- 
glected ; for St. Paul assures them that he had heard 
of their faith in Christ, and of their love to their fellow 
Christians ; and continually gave thanks to God for 
them. Yet after all this, he did not think it needless 
to address them in the words of the text ; to warn 
them of the evil that would continually beset them, to 



SERMON XXX. 265 

advise them earnestly to put on the whole armour of 
God, lest in their contest with evil they might be 
overcome by it. 

What St. Paul did not think needless for the Ephe- 
sian Christians, we cannot think unnecessary to us. 
Even those of us who have this morning attended at 
the Lord's Table, and made, I doubt not, sincere reso- 
lutions of remembering Christ's death always, in their 
lives and actions ; they have done no more than the 
Ephesians did, who yet were urged by St, Paul to put 
on the whole armour of God. Indeed, they who are 
best disposed, are the very persons on whom this may 
be urged wtth the greatest advantage. They are 
ready to arm themselves for the battle, and have a good 
heart for the danger before them. They, then, and 
all of us here sssembled, may alike hear to our profit 
what that armour of God is, which may enable us to 
meet our enemy undismayed, and in the end to tri- 
umph over him. 

The first three points which are spoken of do not 
require such particular notice. The loins girt about 
with truth, and the breastplate of righteousness, are 
expressions often used to express that sincerity of pur- 
pose, that strength of an honest conscience, which 
must be at the bottom of all excellence, and the feet 
shod with Christian readiness, for such is the mean- 
ing of the words which are rather obscurely trans- 
lated, " shod with the preparation of the Gospel of 
peace," are also an obvious figure to signify, that with- 
out activity and alertness, a man's good principles 
and good resolutions are little better than useless. 
But these parts of the Christian's armour are not 



266 SERMON XXX. 

peculiar to the Christian; sincerity of purpose, up- 
rightness, and activity in doing what we know to be 
right, are common to all good men of all times, who 
have any pretension to be called so. After these, 
however, the apostle goes on to speak of what are 
peculiarly a Christian's arms; that is, the "shield of 
Faith," the "helmet of salvation," and "the sword of 
the Spirit, which is the word of God." And these it 
may be worth our while to consider somewhat more 
fully. 

It may be said, however, at the outset, that although 
the three things here spoken of are distinct in them- 
selves, and can very well be considered separately, 
yet that in practice it is almost impossible that they 
should exist for any length of time without each other. 
We can see at once that the hope of salvation, which 
is the apostle's own explanation of what he means by 
the word " helmet," and the " sword of the Spirit, 
which is the word of God," cannot well exist without 
faith. A man cannot hope for heaven, if he does not 
believe in God's promises, nor use the Scripture with 
effect, if he does uot believe that it contains the words 
of truth. But neither can the faith exist long without 
the hope of salvation, and the use of the word of God. 
At least, if the faith may be said to exist, it will be 
no shield to us, such as the apostle speaks of; it will 
be a faith strong only when there is nothing to try it, 
but if ever we attempt to raise it up against the storm 
of temptation, we shall find that every arrow can 
pierce through it ; shield, and helmet, and sword, as 
described by the apostle, must go together, or we shall 
soon be despoiled of them all. 



SERMON XXX. 267 

There is nothing new in this ; it has been said often, 
nay it has been said, I believe, by myself more than 
once from this very place ; but yet it is one of those 
things which cannot well be said too often. It is 
found that the yearly subscriptions to some of the reli- 
gious societies have fallen off, and we hear lamenta- 
tions over the growth of unbelief Now this for the 
most part is owing to this, that men have not worn 
habitually the helmet of hope, nor used the sword 
of the Spirit, and therefore their faith has stood, 
only while there was no one to attack it. Nothing 
can be more notorious, than that the hope of salva- 
tion is not that strong and inspiriting principle which 
it ought to be. When the apostle calls it a helmet, 
his notion is, that as a man with his head bare would 
naturally shrink back from the press of battle, would 
stoop and cower to avoid his enemy's blows, so the 
hope of a Christian should, like a helmet, make him 
carry himself erectly and boldly, pressing forward 
and looking upwards, like one whose most vital part 
was well secured. Nor can any thing be more plain 
again, than that men have not fully used the sword of 
the Spirit, which is the word of God. By calling it 
the sword, the apostle means, I believe, that a full 
sense of the truth and excellence of Christ's promises, 
and of the scheme revealed in the Scripture, and of 
the principles of life there given, enables us to com- 
bat victoriously against falsehood and wickedness : 
that a Christian ought to know his own strength better 
than to be standing for ever on the defensive, merely 
answering or trying to answer a host of petty objec- 
tions ; that he should go forth boldly, protesting against, 



268 SERMON XXX. 

exposing, and putting down the manifold follies and 
evils of unchristian principles ; showing what are the 
gods which the world worships ; how false, how vile, 
how thoroughly and necessarily degrading to their 
w^orshippers. But this cannot be done except by those 
who know and can appeal to the fruits of Christianity 
on the other side. If we have not this knowledge, if 
we have never really found the value of the revelation 
of Christ ; if it has never taught us to bear pain or sor- 
row more patiently, and joy more soberly ; if it has 
never softened our tempers, increased our love to our 
neighbour, made us more watchful over ourselves, 
more careful of our time and of the way in which we 
spend our money ; if it has never influenced our 
views in life for ourselves or for our children ; if suc- 
cess has still been what we have most followed, and 
disappointment what we have most dreaded; if we 
have never learnt to forgive, when injured, to be 
meek-spirited and patient with others, knowing how 
much we offend ourselves ; above all, if it has never 
taught us to flee from fleshly lusts which war against 
the soul ; I see not what we have to do with the sword 
of the Spirit : we cannot use it ; for truly its power 
would act against ourselves : the first mass of false- 
hood and evil which it would pierce through and rend 
to pieces, would be that within our own bosoms. 

Conceive then a man going forth into the world 
without either the sword of the Spirit or the helmet of 
salvation ; his conduct and heart not habitually guided 
by Christ's Spirit, and his mind therefore not fully 
aware of the excellence and power of the Gospel, and 
his views for the future not steadied and exalted by 



SERMON XXX. 269 

an enduring hope of the glory which shall be revealed. 
Now, then, what think we is such a man's faith ? Is 
it indeed a deep and abiding sense of what God and 
Christ have done for him ; that assuredly he is for- 
given because Christ died, that because Christ rose, 
he also shall rise hereafter ? Nothing of the sort ; it 
is what is called a belief in Christianity, a belief in 
the Bible ; that Jesus Christ did miracles, and that 
the Bible is true. He makes his belief a theoretical 
matter, involving ten thousand points, infinitely vari- 
ous in importance, and some of them of no importance 
at all. Any attack on any point contained in any of 
the books of the Old or New Testament, questions 
critical, scientific, or historical, all fill him with alarm 
and uneasiness ; all seem to him to be an attack upon 
his religion ; he thinks that if he cannot answer them, 
the enemy must be right, and Christianity a fable. 
And it often happens that he cannot answer them ; 
and then his faith, if we may call by this name what, 
indeed, never in the Scripture sense of the word 
deserved it, becomes as weak as his hope had ever 
been : he knows no more of the shield of faith than he 
had ever done of the sword of the Spirit. 

I cannot forbear mentioning, as an instance of what 
I mean, the mischievous effects which I have known 
to be produced on young men's minds by reading 
such works as that of Gibbon. It is, indeed, a most 
dangerous work to the belief of those who have neither 
helmet nor sword ; nor, in the full Scripture sense of 
the term, shield of faith either. The writer, who, 
unhappily, knew not what the fruits of the Gospel are ; 
and who, besides, was very ill acquainted with the 



270 SERMON XXX. 

New Testament itself, as a mere book, delights in ex- 
posing the faults and weaknesses of Christians, and in 
sneering at particular doctrines, or facts, or charac- 
ters, or in questioning the genuineness of particular 
passages in the volumes of the Old and New Testa- 
ment. The doctrines, taken away from every thing 
practical, stated not in the broad and impressive lan- 
guage of the Scripture, but with the endless subtilties 
and littlenesses with which theologians in their contro- 
versies invested them, are easily represented as either 
uncharitable or unimportant, to him who has never 
himself used them aright, and knows not their intrinsic 
power. The faults and follies of Christians seem to 
be the natural fruits of Christianity, to him who 
knows not from experience what its real fruits are ; 
while splendid faults are easily made to appear vir- 
tues in his eyes who has never been in the habit of 
thinking practically about good and evil, nor of exam- 
ining his ways according to the mind of the Spirit of 
God. And the attacks innumerable on a hundred 
trifling points in the volumes of the two Testaments 
are disturbing to one who considers all such matters 
as affecting the truth of Christ's Gospel, and who finds 
also the unfair and foolish manner in which such 
attacks are sometimes attempted to be answered. 
While, on the other hand, because the man has not 
the sword of the Spirit of Christ, he knows not how to 
meet such a book as Gibbon's on higher ground ; to 
expose with mingled indignation and pity the num- 
berless inconsistencies, the low profligacy, the gross 
moral ignorance of good and evil, which prevail 
through it from one end to the other ; so that seeing 



SERMON XXX. 271 

there what are the fruits of another spirit, and having 
the happiness to know himself what are the fruits of 
Christ's Spirit, he looks upon the book as affording no 
less evidence to the truth of God, than was afforded of 
old by the holy lives of the first Christian societies, 
when compared with those who frequented the dis- 
graceful festivals of the gods of the heathens. 

He who is armed with the helmet of hope and with 
the sword of the Spirit, will, indeed, be sure to hold 
fast the shield of faith. And being so armed, he will 
be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done 
all, to stand. In the evil day, whether we refer it 
merely to the common trials and temptations of life, 
which are sure to beset us ; or whether we may look 
forward now to the coming of one of those periods of 
severer trial, with which the Church of Christ has 
from time to time been visited. In either case, what- 
ever may be reserved for this generation, and judging 
only by what is actually before our eyes, it is impos- 
sible not to feel the deepest interest for every indi- 
vidual who successively goes forth from this place to 
enter upon life's harder trials. It is impossible not to 
wish, not to pray most earnestly, that he may be ena- 
bled by God's grace to put on the whole armour of 
God. It is impossible not to desire that he should 
possess in their fulness the spirit of truth, and the 
spirit of love : of truth, to discern his way steadily 
amidst so strange a mass of conflicting and opposite 
errors ; of love, that if ever through the difficulty ol 
discerning truth he be led into error, yet that an 
abounding love of Christ, the true salt of the soul, may 
render his error, to himself at least, so far as regards 



272 SERMON XXX. 

his highest and eternal welfare, harmless. We may 
desire, and we may labour, but man cannot deliver his 
brother. The victory rests with yourselves and wdth 
God. But pray and labour earnestly to obtain the 
true sword of the Spirit ; to know by experience what 
are the riches of the power of Christ's Gospel ; how it 
opens the eyes of the understanding, as well as en- 
larges the noblest of our affections ; for it is most 
truly written, " He that is spiritual judgeth all things." 
The world is before him like a map, containing, in- 
deed, parts of yet undiscovered and undiscoverable 
country — for the first source and fountains of that 
great river of evil, who has found, or who can find ? — 
but yet, in its main points, and in their bearings upon 
each other, sufficiently intelligible. This is their 
privilege, who have learnt in sincerity to know the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of his death, and the 
glory of his resurrection. There is our corner- 
stone, which never can be shaken, that fact better 
proved than any other recorded in history — that He, 
whose words and whose life displayed the wisdom of 
God, and the goodness of God, overcame death to dis- 
play the power of God also : that goodness and wisdom, 
through the power of God, are too mighty to be lost 
for ever in the grave. When dwelling on His words, 
who spake as never man spake ; when looking on 
His actions, who went about doing good ; when our 
spirits are moved in complete union with his Spirit, 
and we feel that it is good for us to be with Him in 
life or in death ; that with Him we would venture our 
every hope, and submit to his guidance our every 
affection and desire ; then it is that we can enter 



SERMON XXX. 273 

somewhat into the joy of those words, worthy, indeed, 
to be proclaimed by an angel's voice, which tell us, 
that the Lord is risen. From the darkness of that 
grave in which all else on earth are lost to our view, 
He is risen, and ascended to the eternal light beyond 
it. And then we turn with thankfulness and joy un- 
utterable to our own promised share in his triumph ; 
that He is gone to prepare a place for us ; that He 
will come again, and receive us unto himself, that 
where He is there may we be also* 



12 



ADDRESS BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 



Although it is very true that where great stress is 
laid upon any one particular crisis in our spiritual 
life, and where a strict preparation has been made for 
it, the effect, as soon as it is over, is often exceedingly 
shortlived, and people, feeling themselves in a manner 
released from something that was hanging over them, 
run wild with even the greater eagerness, in conse- 
quence of their late restraint ; although there be this 
danger attending any unwonted effort, if made too 
violently, and especially in matters that concern our 
souls, yet as no good is to be done without such an 
effort, and as it need not be overstrained or excessive, 
so I thinkt hat the preparation for confirmation may 
be of the greatest use to you, and I would not lose 
this opportunity of turning it, so far as I can, to your 
lasting benefit. 

I take it for granted, that of the uses and duties of 
confirmation in general, you must have some tolerable 
notion, from what has been said to you about it, and 
from what you have read yourselves. That you are 
now, in a manner, beginning again your Christian 



276 ADDRESS 

course, with the promises of the Gospel again person- 
ally addressed to you, and a renewed call to you, to 
be disposed in heart and mind to live as believing 
them, you will have learnt already ; and I need not 
now repeat it to you. What I wish to do, is to speak 
of confirmation as it concerns you who are now here 
assembled, in the particular situation in which you 
are placed, some of you being very shortly to enter 
upon the business of active life, or on a state of more 
immediate preparation for it ; and the greater part 
being likely still to continue for a time exposed to the 
peculiar temptations of a school, and having to dis- 
charge its peculiar duties. 

And, for the first of these two classes, there is no 
promise in the Scripture which is more certainly con- 
firmed by experience, than where Christ has told us 
to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness, and that, then, all other things shall be added 
unto us : that is, that the surest way to earthly happi- 
ness, as well as to that which comes after death, is to 
begin life and to go through it with steady Christian 
principles. I do not mean, by Christian principles, a 
firm profession of belief in the Christian religion ; still 
less, a respect, however sincere, for the church and 
its institutions. Officers of the Army and Navy have, 
I fear, on this point, often fatally deceived themselves : 
they think sometimes, that in their profession, if they 
are regular in attending and enforcing the attendance 
of their men at divine service on a Sunday, — if they 
avoid swearing and profane language, and try to 
keep up respect to religion and its ministers amongst 
those under their command or influence, — they may 



BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 2T7 

safely consider themselves as true Christians. But 
he is a Christian, who, for the love of Christ, and with 
prayers for the help of Christ's Spirit, struggles against 
the besetting temptations of his particular calling. 
And in the world in general, but most especially in 
the Army and Navy, the great and besetting tempta- 
tion is to prefer the praise of men to the praise of God, 
and to dread the reproach of men more than the re- 
proach of God. Where this feeling is not earnestly 
struggled with, it obtains in a short time such a do- 
minion, that we shall certainly act in every point as 
it leads us. The most degrading personal cowardice 
is not so complete a bondage as the cowardice which 
fears to be called coward. The most timid man alive 
would be ashamed to say, and to accustom himself to 
think, that if he were placed in a situation of danger, 
he must fly from it. However fearful his nature, he 
would struggle against his weakness, and pray earn- 
estly, and earnestly labour, that if he were to be 
tried with severe pain and danger, they might not 
overpower his firmness ; and there are many instances 
of persons, constitutionally timid, thus bracing them- 
selves, and being supported by God ; so that their 
resolution has endured amidst the most appalling 
dangers and the most fearful torments. But moral 
cowardice, — or the fear of what man can do, not to 
kill the body, but to inflict shame and insult on the 
mind, — men do not scruple to confess that they would 
yield to. They will expose their own lives, and risk 
taking away the lives of others, in personal quarrels, 
because they have been accustomed to set such a value 
on the good opinion of the world, that the temptation 



278 ADDRESS 

of dishonour is one which they are not strong enough 
to resist. 

For those, then, who are soon going to enter upon 
active life, the most earnest prayer that I would urge 
them to make to God, on this solemn occasion, is, that 
he would enable them to overcome this most fearful 
temptation, the dread of the censure or dishonour of 
the world. In our state of life, Christ's solemn warn- 
ing may be most profitably altered in word that we 
may most effectually preserve its spirit. We do not 
now so much need to be told, " Fear not them who 
kill the body :" bodily sufferings in the path of our 
duty are no longer our worst dangers ; Christ now 
says to us. Fear not them who can vex the mind and 
feelings with dishonour and insult for a few short 
years, and after that have no more that they can do ; 
but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: fear 
Him who is able to cast you into the lowest pit of 
shame and dishonour for ever, yea, I say unto you, 
fear Him. 

In truth, however, if on your first entrance into 
life, you follow Christ in sincerity and without affec- 
tation, your path will be spared this severe trial. 
Even the world respects a man who is a consistent 
Christian, and allows that he should act in his own 
way, and from his own motives. At any rate, what- 
ever trial you have to encounter, will be chiefly at 
the very beginning. Before a young man is thor- 
oughly known, his Christian principles and practice 
may be suspected of hypocrisy ; but it depends upon 
himself how long the suspicion may last. You will 
confirm it most seriously if your principles are seen 



BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 279 

to be strict on points which you have no inclination 
for, but lax in the case of your own favourite tastes. 
If a timid man, who is passionate in his language, 
and licentious in his life, first provokes a quarrel by 
the violence of his tongue, and then endeavours to 
get out of it, by speaking of the sin of fighting, it is 
manifest, that he would very naturally be thought a 
coward, who only made his principles a cloak to save 
him from what he did not like, not a restraint to curb 
himself from indulging in those vices which he did 
like. And another great protection to the principles 
of a young man, is to connect himself closely with 
Christian friends. Two men of the same age, inti- 
mate with one another, and both in earnest in their 
desire to please God, are a strength and support to 
each other, of incalculable value. A larger number 
of such friends becomes still more invincible to temp- 
tation, and to say nothing of other advantages, should 
our acting steadily on Christian principles ever expose 
us to the ridicule or contempt of the world, how 
greatly is such a trial lessened, when those whom we 
most love and value continue to honour and respect 
us, because their estimate of life is the same with 
our own. 

I may seem to have been long upon this subject ; 
but what I have said is in truth the great lesson of 
life, and a few minutes need not be grudged to hear- 
ing it. It is this too in which you most need confirma- 
tion : for in your struggles against common vices, the 
world itself will help you ; in condemning idleness, 
and meanness, and falsehood, and unkindness, and ill- 
nature, the world and the Gospel are agreed. It is to 



280 ADDRESS 

run the race of Christians that you are now preparing ; 
and that must needs be most difficult, where not the 
flesh only, but the world, are united to obstruct it. 
So, too, for those among you who are still to continue 
here some time longer ; your danger is greatest, and 
your need of confirmation, or the help of God, is 
most urgent, where the world in which you live exer- 
cises its influences against your progress. To you I 
need not speak of the vices of meanness and illnature, 
for even the voice of the world in which you live 
condemns these. But as the world of men is far less 
pure than the Spirit of God, so the opinion of the 
world of boys is even less pure than that of men. 
Idleness, which in after life is despised, is, perhaps, 
rather encouraged by the voice of that society in which 
you are now living : selfish extravagance, and the 
practice of incurring debts, too lightly censured in 
manhood, are here, I fear, scarcely censured at all. 
The plain common-sense notion, that your interest 
and mine, are, in fact, the same ; — that school regu- 
lations are not laid on, or enforced, out of a petty 
love of power or moroseness, and that, therefore, 
it is all fair to evade them, but are intended 
solely to train and accustom you to do what a few 
years hence you would be ashamed not to do ; that 
the principles and feelings which I wish to inspire 
amongst you are but those in which all good men 
have lived and died, and in which, by God's blessing, 
I hope to live and die myself; — this plain way of look- 
ing at your present state, and the views of conduct 
which would follow it, are not yet established amongst 
you. The fact is, that public opinion, in schools, is 



BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 281 

in many points the opinion exactly of the most worth- 
less members of them, which they spare no pains to 
enforce, and to which the well-disposed yield out of 
weakness. Indeed, if we could ever safely or inno- 
cently wish for one evil to cast out another, I should 
almost say, that a boy when placed at a public school 
would find pride a most valuable safeguard to his prin- 
ciples : he would then scorn to be led blindly in the 
track of others ; he would look with disgust and con- 
tempt upon the low principles which he has heard ad- 
vanced around him, and the low practice which flowed 
from them. But what pride could not do without 
causing other evils at the same time — uncharitableness 
towards others, and a dangerous satisfaction in our- 
selves — that the Spirit of Christ, whose aid will be 
to-morrow in a particular manner implored for you, 
will enable you to do in meekness and in tenderness. 
If you examine your hearts and lives by the light of 
the Scripture, you will find cause enough to make you 
humble for yourselves, and indulgent to others : but 
if you strive, also, to walk by the light of the Spirit, 
you will be bold and decided in thinking for yourselves, 
and in doing what you yourselves approve, without 
caring for the opinion of your companions. And as 
the public opinion among boys, as well as men, is 
swayed by the influence of decided characters, so 
two or three individuals, steadily and quietly acting as 
they think right, will in a short time be like a leaven, 
to leaven the whole mass : they will win over to their 
side that number, in all societies, who follow the turn 
of the stream ; and the bad will be left in that state 
in which it is our hope that they may be hereafter in 
the universe — a minority of unmixed evil . 



282 ADDRESS 

Therefore I would say to all of you, if you wish to 
avail yourselves usefully of this solemn occasion, — if 
you wish to be really confirmed in Christian princi- 
ples, — let your most earnest prayer to God be, that 
you may follow Christ with a single mind and a 
single heart, not with affections divided between him 
and his enemies, with a wish to please him when it 
will not interfere with pleasing the world. Attach 
yourselves to your Saviour who has died for you, and 
let him be indeed your bread of life for ever. I use 
the forcible language of Scripture for the purpose of 
impressing upon your minds, that the simplest and 
surest way to learn all holiness and all goodness, is 
to learn a personal love and trust for that gracious 
Saviour in whom God has made himself comprehen- 
sible to man, whom we may look to at this moment as 
standing in his own human form at the right hand of 
the Majesty on high, our Redeemer, our Lord, and 
our God. This is Christianity, this is life eternal, — 
to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
he has sent. And this, although the very language 
of it may seem strange to your ears, is nothing ex- 
travagant, nothing foolish, nothing to make you affect- 
ed in manner or behaviour, to make you ignorant, 
or to make you gloomy. True it is, it does require 
that you should be in earnest ; that you should feel, 
that this world, beautiful as it is, and the rich hap- 
piness that even yet is to be found in it, is not our 
eternal portion ; that as all these things must pass 
away, and we must dwell for ever with God or with 
the devils, it is our wisdom to learn to know God and 
to love him here, even in our youth, or else heaven, 
even if we were to be admitted there, could afford us 



BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 283 

no enjoyment. True it is, that our evil and careless 
nature will require many efforts to change it; and 
the best of those efforts must be our prayers. True 
it is, that you must pray when your prayers are not a 
mere form ; that you must read the Scriptures, when 
you are not called to read them as your lesson. You 
have much to do ; but that ought not to discourage you 
in the full activity of youthful spirits, when to do is to 
enjoy. You have much to overcome ; and if you 
leave the chapel to-morrow, with hearts ever so much 
warmed and resolutions ever so earnest, yet you will 
be sure ere long to slacken in your efforts. Zeal will 
cool, and resolutions will be broken. But be not 
afraid : — Christ's blood cleanseth us from all sin ; 
Christ's Spirit can give us at the last the victory. Be 
most afraid of carelessness, of forgetting God alto- 
gether, of letting days, and weeks, and months pass by, 
unmarked by any spiritual improvement, and, there- 
fore, surely marked by spiritual decay. If this be 
your case, I pray that God in his mercy may visit you 
with disappointments, with distress, with sickness, 
with any sorrow that may awaken you in time, and 
save you from the sorrow that worketh death. Better 
a thousand times that you should give all the world 
in exchange, than that you should lose your own souls. 
And now remember, that in this rite of confirmation, 
and in the words that you have now heard, you have 
received a talent for which you must answer at the 
judgment-seat of Christ. It may be either, with God's 
blessing, the seed of your eternal life, or savour of 
death unto death, heightening your guilt, if you know, 
and were warned, and yet refuse to listen. It is my 



284 ADDRESS BEFORE CONFIRMATION. 

duty to place this responsibility upon you, as Christ 
has charged his ministers, and as he did himself. 
May God grant that we may each give our account 
with joy, and not with grief; and that when our Lord 
shall call us all out of our graves to meet his coming, 
we may stand at his right hand together, amongst the 
number of his redeemed. 



THE END. 



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•Imilar compilation." W^^f 



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